


Off the Grid

by spookywoods



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:46:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookywoods/pseuds/spookywoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly AU -- Stiles hasn't seen or heard from his father since he was 10 years old. So when a park ranger in Alaska gets in touch and breaks the news of his father's disappearance and presumed demise, Stiles is not thrilled about having to trek it up to the Last Frontier to settle his father's affairs. He's particularly not thrilled about getting stuck there for the winter. Or having to deal with the bizarre locals, and the mysterious Ranger Derek Hale, who can't seem to stop messing things up for Stiles at every turn.</p><p>updating and..maybe... finishing <s>Summer 2015</s>in 2016</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But I'm Stuck in Colder Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Not a seasoned fic writer, and this is my first real attempt at any Sterek. Un beta'd. Mistakes are my own. I took some liberties with the setting, but for the most part it is accurately depicted. It will get less accurate as I have not been there in the winter.
> 
>  
> 
> Come visit on tumblr, spookywoods.tumblr.com and shoot me a review to let me know what you think.

He twitched in his seat when the slow churn of the landing gear lowering vibrated below him. Stiles pulled his fingers into his sweaty palms, glanced out the window at the cloudy sky, and tried his hardest not to think about every plane crash in every movie he’d ever seen. What was he even doing on a plane? What was he even doing in Alaska? A part of him was still convinced the whole thing was an elaborate joke Scott had managed to formulate, because somehow, this whole situation had morphed itself into every level of hell imaginable as far as Stiles was concerned.

But he knew it was real. He knew because his best friend would never joke about his dad. And Stiles remembered bits and pieces of moments as the ranger told him over that phone that John Stilinski had disappeared. He remembered being eight years old and having Copper River Salmon on special occasions. He remembered the ski lessons his dad had started him on the winter before his mom died. And when the ranger began to say, “No one knows when or how…because your father wanted it that way…he was disconnected from the world. He was—” _Off the grid_ , Stiles had finished. Because when he was ten years old and mourning the loss of his mom, those were the exact words he overheard the lawyers say to Melissa – that there was no use trying to find or contact John. He was gone.

And so Stiles may have gained an unhealthy hatred for those things he connected to his dad: snow, fish, fast food, the law… He moved to San Diego with Scott for school and never looked back North again. He went back to Beacon Hills for Christmas at the McCall’s, but Stiles never felt at ease in that town. He needed distance from the familiar there, to not be reminded of the memories that at first he’d clung to so desperately, but  now could barely reminisce over even if he wanted to.

He’d made a life for himself, savoring a fresh start with no baggage. Nobody outside of Beacon Hills ever looked at him like they knew his mother died a slow, torturous death in front of him; or like they knew his father couldn’t handle the loss of his wife so he up and left his son in the hands of his best friend’s mother. When college started, Stiles was free of those looks, and the assumptions that followed them. He grew up and into himself, less spastic and nervous, and more--well, more controlled but still a bit jittery at times.

He and Scott got an apartment. They played lacrosse, surfed, soaked up the sun. Stiles even missed a midterm once when he heard there were good waves at a beach two towns over. And thank the fates that he did, because meeting with his professor, Dr. Oliver, to discuss the makeup test is what sent him on his path of cultural anthropology and archaeology. And thanks to Dr. Oliver, he got his internship at a crazy awesome museum in Arizona, did his field school there, and got a job as a consulting researcher at contract firm. He’d just got back from finishing a field study in Guatemala when he got the missed call and message from Ranger Camwell.

The Ranger had seemed nice enough, even sympathetic to Stiles situation after he’d explained it. But it didn’t matter that he had been estranged from his father for almost fifteen years. Stiles was still John’s next of kin. And apparently his property in south western Alaska was extensive. Also remote.

“Define ‘remote’?” Stiles had asked.

Ranger Camwell cleared his throat. “Well, you could take a chartered plane in… Or you could hitch a ride in through the park, get dropped at the bridge and walk over to the town.”

Stiles sighed at the convolution of it all, just to get to this town that was disconnected from the rest of the world. Why did he need to go out there to claim a place he didn’t even want? To declare someone dead he didn’t even honestly know?

“How much would a charter ride be? Say, from Anchorage?”

“Oh boy,” Camwell replied. “Getting someone to take you…an outsider…Probably $1400. Actually, more toward a full two grand this late in the season.”

“What?” Stiles squawked. “That’s insane.”

“You know, your dad was sort of acquainted with a guy--I think they were fishing buddies – who makes trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks every week or so. He might be inclined to pick you up and bring you in.”

And that is how Stiles found himself sitting outside the Fairbanks airport, holding his small carryon bag, wearing a light North Face jacket he’d borrowed from Scott, while hitting the call button over and over again trying to get a hold of Neil Cassey, outdoorsman extraordinaire. The man would only communicate with Stiles through email, but managed to finally include a cell number he said would be in service _on the grid._

Stiles pulled out his trifecta energy bar, gluten free, vegan, and organic, upset he had to resort to his stash so soon because of unbridled hunger, but convinced if Neil was even coming at all, he would be two hours late. He reached up to take a bite when a voice rattled off from behind him.

“Boy, did you get my packing list and disregard it completely or do you not understand that this is Alaska?”

Stiles bolted upright losing his energy bar to gravity as he swung around to see an older man staring back at him. Well, he wasn’t wearing red flannel and suspenders, but he did have a salt and pepper beard. And this was a true Alaskan mountain man, according to Ranger Camwell. Neil was wearing jeans and a midweight coat. His hair was tied back behind a cap that shaded his shrewd, beady eyes.

“Neil Cassey,” the man said, apparently unfazed that he had just snuck up and changed the rhythm of Stiles heartbeat. Stiles shook his hand and stuttered out his own name in return. This got him a mild smile from the older man, who started walking away asking, “You pack anything warmer than that jacket? Otherwise, your southern sensibilities are going to get frostbite and fall off…quickly.”

“It’s really not that cold right now,” Stiles offered with a smile. “And I don’t plan on staying too long, you know, just until I can get whatever this is sorted and be done with it.”

Neil eyed him with a puzzled look but kept walking in silence. After scaling up to the second story of the parking garage, they got in a beat up green Bronco and Stiles felt the silence eat at him. Or was that his hunger?

“We can stop somewhere on our way out,” Neil offered.

Yes. Food.

“I really think—” Stiles began but was cut off when the mountain man started singing Folsom Prison Blues. Stiles clutched his messenger bag as Neil sped down the road in the direction of a strip mall. They exited the truck in silence and Stiles stared at the parkas in the window as they approached the store, feeling more and more repulsed by the implication of cold or snow by the minute.

“You might think you’ll get things figured out and be done with it, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be done with you,” Neil imparted in his cryptic mountain man way before walking into the store.

“She who?” Stiles stood outside with his mouth hanging open. “Who is ‘she’!?!?”

Neil disappeared in the store behind racks of jackets and fishing overalls. Stiles could not believe this was his life. He took a deep breath and entered the store, seeking out the man that was supposed to be his Alaskan guide. Neil already had two fleeces, a heavy coat, a rain coat, a parka, three sets of long underwear, and five pairs of wool socks, before he turned to Stiles and asked what size shoe he wore, and that he hoped it was okay that he just assumed Stiles’ New Balance were not waterproof.

“What do I need waterproof shoes for?” Stiles questioned.

“What do you need waterproof shoes for…” Neil repeated and grabbed a box from the Keen rack. “These’ll do…for now. I might have a pair of snow shoes or boots a size different than yours. You might not be here the whole winter so let’s not get a head of ourselves.”

“W-w-winter?” Stiles stammered. “It’s the first week of September!”

“You’re right,” Neil offered. “We should get more layers.”

Stiles would have thrown up his hands in bafflement if not for the pile of winter garments he was holding. By the time they reached the checkout, he was sure he’d have to remortgage his condo before he could afford all the items Neil deemed “necessary for survival”.

With every beep of a scanned item Stiles heart sank lower; $70 for a synthetic pair of long underwear? $30 for a pair of socks? He’d already pulled out his card and was thinking he should just hand it to the cashier before he heard the total, otherwise he might just cut and run and head back to San Diego. But Neil gave the guy an American Express before Stiles even had to talk himself down from disserting. 

“Hey man, I can’t let you pay for all of this,” Stiles began, then his eyes fell on the total, $733.82, and he started shaking his head.

A chuckle escaped Neil’s lips before he leaned in and whispered, “It’s your dad’s card, Stiles.”

“My dad is dead,” he replied.

“Maybe so,” Neil stated. “But his card ain’t.”

 

Before they left town, Neil took Stiles to a super grocery, got him an ice chest, and forced Stiles to buy enough food for a month. He also bought a rotisserie chicken and ate the entire thing in less than five minutes. Neil watched on, shaking his head from time to time while he munched on salmon jerky. He’d offered some to Stiles, who shook his head and gave him a big, “No thank yewwwwwww” in reply. By the time they were packed up and ready, it was nearing 10 pm, and Stiles was feeling the effects of travelling.

“I’m pretty worn out. How long’s the drive gonna be?” he asked.

Neil remained ever stoic on the driver’s side, but titled his head to give Stiles a brief glance. “Well, tonight we’ll drive to the campsite in Chitina. Then I’ll fly you into McCarthy in the morning. I know you have a meeting with Ranger Hale at 11 so we’ll be on a tight schedule.”

Stiles shook his head. “You mean Ranger Camwell. I’ve been talking to Ranger Camwell about the incident report and all the things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles squirmed. “All the things! The things you have to do to declare someone dead when they died on National Park land.”

Neil sighed. “Well, Camwell went back south to Washington for the season. It’s Hale in charge up there now for the winter.” Stiles couldn’t hide his disappointment. Not only had he established a working relationship with Steve Camwell, but the ranger had basically promised to make the situation go as smoothly and quickly as bureaucratically possible -- something that was beginning to worry Stiles the more he spoke with Neil. As if sensing Stiles’ apprehension, Neil added, “You’ve nothing to worry about with Hale. He’s fair. Very much a rule follower…Can’t say I’ve ever seen him smile…but we’ve had worse NPS up there. Though you won’t hear anybody else—save me—admit that.”

“What? Why?” Stiles asked.

“The only people McCarthy locals don’t hate are McCarthy locals. They absolutely loathe the Park Service and interlopers.” Neil smiled.

Stiles didn’t know what to make of what he was hearing. He was under the assumption the only driving force of the McCarthy economy was the sightseeing and backpackers that came through the town to visit Wrangell-St. Elias. “So who are the interlopers?”

“Tourists,” Neil answered. “You.”

“Me?” Stiles croaked. “Don’t they know I don’t want to be there?”

“You better not tell them what they do or do not know.”

“Dear God, where are you taking me?” Stiles groaned. “My father was not a local. He was born and raised in California. Did they hate him?”

Neil sighed. “No.”

Silence settled over the car and Stiles eventually drifted off. When the truck began to slow, he could see civilization again, which he assumed was the small town of Chitina. They pulled up to a small tent cabin, its second half and the roof only consisting of canvas. Stiles fell out of the Bronco and followed Neil inside.

After they were settled in, Stiles curled up in a sleeping bag on the bottom bunk but couldn’t quite get warm or comfortable.

“Stop squirming,” Neil said from the top bunk.

“I’m cold.”

He heard a sigh and then the clank of keys on the floor below.

“Go get the long johns.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. After making his way outside in the dark and feeling his way through the cab of the truck, he’d grabbed the damn $70 synthetic glorified tights and was heading back to the tent—er—cabin, when he heard a loud crush of gravel behind him.

He froze.

Crunch. Crunch.

Stiles turned around in time to see a large shadow on the other side of campground, a shadow that was imminently approaching his personal space. At an alarming rate. He froze.

And then when it was about fifteen feet away, realization dawned on him and he made a break for the door of the cabin.

“BEAR!” he screamed and flailed his arms above his head. “THERE’S A BEAR!”

Stiles ran into the cabin, slammed the door, locked it, and repeated, “Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. There’s a bear. Oh my god. He’s out for a midnight snack. And I’m all plump and ready after that chicken and, Jesus, he’s got my scent! He’s gonna get us.”

“Calm down you idiot,” came Neil’s disinterested voice. “It’s just a bear.”

Stiles scoffed, “Just a bear. Just a bear he says. Just big shiny teeth and long sharp claws.”

“Go to bed, Stiles,” Neil said.

“Bed he says, as if I could sleep knowing there are bears out there.”

“If it comforts you to know, they’ll be hibernating soon.”

Stiles shook his head and climbed into bed, his eyes still glued to the door. “Sadly, I find little comfort in that at this current moment. How are you not freaking out right now?”

He heard Neil chuckling and waited for a response. There was none. 


	2. Just the Bear Necessities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles arrives in McCarthy to quite a few surprises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly advancing the story as quickly as I'd hoped. This might be too angsty. Ugh. Unbeta'd and illadvised. Hopefully my Stiles is still believable. Oh, and Derek. Yeah.

_Stiles couldn’t remember falling asleep--he couldn’t remember unclenching his jaw and letting the adrenaline seep out of his system. But he slept, and he dreamed he was running through a dark woods. Someone was running with him, behind him. They were chasing him. No matter how far or how fast, he couldn’t seem to shake them. He’d cut around a bend, go over a ridge, trudge across a creek, but he couldn’t lose his pursuer. Finally, he tripped on a log, fell and hurt his wrist. He examined it closely only to look up into the eyes of the one who followed him. Blue. They were a stark, arctic blue._

And when he woke, he didn’t remember his dream, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Neil quickly replaced Stiles’ contemplation when he thrust a bag in his face and gave him five minutes before they’d head out.

After he dressed, Stiles poked his head out the door and examined the camp for any sign of the bear.

“Hey, BooBoo?” he chimed.

Nothing.

Satisfied, he stepped out and met Neil at the car. The crisp air startled him. It was cooler than the day before, so he got in the cab, found the heavier coat Neil forced him to buy, and put it on. After being informed that this was one of the last places he might get cell service, Stiles whipped out his phone and called Scott.

“Hey buddy, hey pal, best friend and confidante,” Stiles cooed.

He could hear Scott yawning. “Stiles? You need me to pick you up already?”

“No, oh no, not yet, it’s been less than a day, jeez. No, Scott, I just wanted to tell you that my last will and testament is in the drawer next to my computer, and if anything should happen to me, you can have my stuff.” Stiles shivered as a dark image of a bear flashed through his mind.

“How is it up there?” his friend asked.

“How is it? It’s everything I hate and more. I paid a buck ninety-nine for a Snickers and it wasn’t even a King Size. Scott,” Stiles whispered. “This is your last chance to come out with the punch line.”

“There's no taxes. Wait, you ate a Snickers?”

“My blood sugar was low,” Stiles croaked. “The guy seems to think this might take more than a few days.”

Scott giggled, “You mean the husky mountain man?”

“Okay, first of all,” Stiles frowned, “this guy is like sixty years old.”

“But there have been mountain men? C’mon Stiles, that is the one thing you said you were looking forward to…What did you say? Lumberjack flannel and suspenders?”

“God, Scott, no! That must be your fantasy, not mine.” Stiles laughed, acutely aware that his friend was completely straight and probably cringing on the other end of the phone.

“Why does he think that it will take longer?” Scott questioned.

“I don’t know, but he loaded me up with enough gear to run the Iditarod.”

“Do you get to drive a sled team?” Scott was unable to hide his excitement.

Stiles rolled his eyes and turned to see what Neil was doing. He was on the other side of the campground bent over on the ground. He appeared to be examining the tracks left by the ferocious beast the night before.

“Scott,” he whispered, voice faltering. “I’m really out of my element here. How am I supposed to do this?”

He heard a sigh on the other end. “Maybe this is a chance for you to finally say goodbye. Maybe get some closure.”

“Why thank you Dr. Phil, your insight and advice are what is going to get me through this unthinkable situation.” He couldn’t hide the indignation in his voice.

“You know what, Stiles? Seriously, when was the last time you thought about your dad? You haven’t even been to your mother’s grave since before high school. He may have run away but you’ve done your share of it too.”

Stiles stood, phone to his ear, mouth open, and speechless. Did his best friend really just compare him to his dead-beat dad? For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of his staggered breaths and the rush of adrenaline through his veins. He heard the engine of the Bronco roar to life.

“I’m not my father,” Stiles managed to say. “You didn’t know him and you don’t get to sit there in your comfy beach house and lecture me on closure, not when I’m up here in the freaking Alaskan wilderness getting accosted by bears and led into the hillbilly town of the Yukon. And you know what? Screw you, Scott. There’s no excuse for what he did, and I don’t need closure, I need to not be this far away from the equator. This is the one time I needed you to be there for me and you can’t even do that right. Go catch a wave or something. I have to go be responsible for officially ending someone else’s life.”

He hung up and ran his hand over his hair. Stiles wished that bear would come back and fight him like a man, in the daylight, when he had the will to stand up and do something stupid. Why was Scott suddenly psychoanalyzing the situation? There wasn’t even a situation, nothing, nope. Just his dad. No, not even his dad. Just a dead guy, well, presumed dead guy, and his extensive property to deal with. Stiles wondered what the going rate for nine acres outside McCarthy was, and what exactly “thrown together rustic cabin” meant to a mountain man. Because to a realtor, there might be a certain charm to be—

“Kid, you gonna stand there all day or are we gonna go?” Neil called from the open door of the truck.

Stiles let out a shaky breath and ran to the cab. The anger pumping through him quickly turned to nervous energy after Neil informed him the bear from the previous night was “probably an eight-hundred-pounder”.  Stiles couldn’t conceal the squeak he emitted as he clutched the handle of the car door.

“But that’s after a summer of non-stop hunting and eating,” Neil added.

“Right,” Stiles muttered. “Right.”

They drove to the small runway, loaded up Neil’s bush plane, and readied for takeoff.

Stiles tried his best to hide his displeasure at having to fly again as he shoved a power bar in his mouth.

“You got a camera?” Neil asked. Stiles nodded. “You’re gonna wanna get it out. Even if you don’t like nature, you’ll be impressed with what you see today from the sky.”

And was he…Impressed? Try floored. Stiles had never seen anything quite like this. The snow covered mountains and the trees--there were trees everywhere. And everything was so big. The park, he was told, was the size of Switzerland. By the time they made it to McCarthy, Neil pointed out his plot of land outside the town, on a ridge, that had been in his family for almost a hundred years. Then he flew them over the area owned by Stiles’ father. It wasn’t as impressive but Stiles could make out a small cabin beneath some trees before they flew back to McCarthy to land the plane.

“It’s gonna be about four miles up to Kennecott and the rangers,” Neil explained. “I can drop you at your dad’s place and you can take his rig up there yourself.”

“But it’s already 10:40,” Stiles said, glancing at his watch. “Can you take me up there now, instead?”

“No.”

Stiles licked his lip nervously. “Well, okay then. Tell us how you really feel.”

Neil continued to ignore Stiles until they were driving up a “road” to the cabin.

“You can get some necessities at the town store if need be. There’s also the Saloon that has decent enough food and a side liquor store. I wouldn’t go out down there too much if I were you, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“You don’t want to deal with the locals.”

Stiles was sure Neil was right, but he couldn’t understand what exactly he meant by “deal with the locals”. After looking around the town as they drove through, and there wasn’t much to drive through, Stiles couldn’t understand what the big deal was. It was just a town. There was a hotel. A few abandoned buildings. What did the locals have to be so proud of?

Neil left him after showing Stiles how to use an old radio system on the porch and directing him to his dad’s old Chevy that “sticks in second”. Stiles left his bags and ice chest on the porch, not wanting to go into the home of his dead, estranged father just yet, and also acutely aware that he was almost forty minutes late for his meeting with the ranger.

He drove back to the town of McCarthy and then followed the road up to the old mill town of Kennecott, where a few people still lived including the park rangers. The dirt road up, and who was he kidding, they were all dirt roads, but this one was particularly bumpy and narrow, was ensconced in trees and steep run offs. He learned just how narrow and how steep it was when he was forced to pull over to the side and stop for an oncoming truck to pass. The guy driving reminded Stiles of Neil, except for the exceptional scowl plastered across his face when he met Stiles’ eyes. A few minutes later, he drove by a crude looking house with more than a half a dozen old vehicles scattered around it, and assumed the man had come from there.

The actual mill town looked nicer than anything else he’d seen so far. Some of its buildings were refurbished and they all had a bright, vivid brick red to them, complete with white window trim. After he parked in a place he was sure he wasn’t supposed to, he made his way up to the main street—er—walkway, and found the visitor’s center. And by visitor’s center, he found the small shop area that had an open sign.

A perky looking young lady ranger popped her blonde head up and smiled, greeting Stiles with a bit more enthusiasm than he thought was customary.

“Hi, um, I’m looking for Ranger Hale?” The ranger’s smile wavered. “I’m supposed to meet him, or I was supposed to at eleven, but my flight got in later than expected, and then I had to go drop off my stuff and…I’m not a,” Stiles made air quotes, “’local’ so I don’t really know where I’m going and what not. For a while, I thought I had taken the wrong road.”

The ranger continued to force a smile as she replied, “Well, there’s few roads up here. It’s hard to get lost. Um, Ranger Hale stepped out a couple minutes ago to check on some things down at the construction site.”

Stiles glanced out the window and down the street—er—walkway. There seemed to be some activity in front of the actual mill structure. He pointed to it, “Just there?” he asked. He made his way for the door, but the ranger’s voice stopped him.

“You can wait here for Ranger Hale. He’ll be back soon.”

He smiled, “I really can’t afford to wait. I’ll just go meet him over there.”

“I think—” but her voice was cut off by the slamming of the door, as Stiles bolted across the walk, which was actually a road, and headed to the mill. He saw a few trucks up ahead, and crossed a large bridge—er—retired railway trellis that was over a winding, steep creek. He saw a few men outside a building, most of them wearing neon yellow and orange construction vests, but one, with his back to Stiles, was in evergreen ranger dress.

Stiles cleared his throat. The men turned their heads and stared at him, but it was few more seconds before the ranger hat peered around and a pair of pale green eyes glared in Stiles’ direction. It was kind of a slap in the face, only not really, and Stiles had to take a step back to recover from the intensity of the stare.

“Uh, Ranger Hale? I hope I have the right person. I totally thought I was going to be working with someone else. Not that I don’t want to work with you, you know, I hear great things—wonderful things—about you and the way you run things up here.” Stiles could see what Neil meant about not smiling. The man standing in front of him was all lines and points, his face carved like an exquisite statue, a beautiful, indifferent or mildly disgusted statue. “I had a meeting with you earlier. Stiles. Stiles Stilinski.”

Stiles licked his lips and held out his hand.The ranger stepped out of the circle, letting go of a blueprint before approaching Stiles. Hale seemed to be a pretty solid guy, and standing so close to such a domineering structure of a man made Stiles feel a bit small. It didn’t help that he was staring at Stiles like he would care less if a bear came up and pulled Stiles apart limb by limb.

“I was under the impression I would be meeting with Genim,” Hale stated.

“I am Genim,” Stiles cringed. “You know, not too fond of the name though. It gets a lot of weird looks and questions, questions I don’t even think I know how to answer.”

The ranger raised a brow, “And Stiles doesn’t get weird looks or questions?”

“Well,” Stiles gulped. “No, I’m not…You know, they’ve done studies on children who were named after relatives and—”

“I can’t start work on your paperwork until next week,” Hale interrupted, looking over at the construction workers. “These guys will be out of here for the season and I won’t be inundated with archaeologists and contractors every five minutes asking me for ridiculous permissions and privileges.” The very construction workers Hale had just insulted were looking on with crooked smiles. They didn't seem to care he'd pretty much called them ridiculous.

Stiles stammered, “S-start the paperwork? I was under the assumption Ranger Camwell had done most of the work and I just needed to sign some stuff.”

 Hale turned his gazed back to Stiles. “You think you can just declare someone dead by signing your name?”

“Well, no, I mean, I don’t… _I’m_ not declaring him dead.”

“Then what are you doing?” Hale narrowed his eyes.

Stiles stared open mouthed and speechless. The guy did not want him to be anything but uncomfortable.

“This is a very complicated process,” Ranger Hale explained. His stiffened his shoulders and continued, “I have to follow a strict set of rules, and make sure everything is in order every step of the way before I sign my name on a piece of paper declaring someone else’s life is over.”

“I understand. It’s just that Ranger Camwell told me he had it all done up,” Stiles said.

“Ranger Camwell is a seasonal worker. He gives ranger talks on phenology and teaches yoga…in Seattle.”

Stiles blinked back at Hale in confusion.

“Phenology. Keeping _plant diaries_.”

“Well,” Stiles laughed nervously. “I won’t hold it against him.”

“ _Next week_ ,” Ranger Hale emphasized.

“I’ll be back. You can count on it,” Stiles said. He turned and rushed back to his car, trying to get as far away from Ranger Hale as possible and the anger that was building up inside him. First Scott and now this guy. What was next? Was he going to get some lip from the locals? He sped down the mountain, bouncing around the cab of the old truck, letting his anger take over. Who the hell was Ranger Hale to give him a hard time about his name? A name is mother gave him and his father let him discard. Hale probably had some stupid ranger name like Ranger Roger, or Ranger Rick, and he’d go up to innocent bystanders who were unintentionally breaking park rules and set them straight with his unpitying mouth and judgmental eyes. And what kind of person comes to a place like McCarthy and Kennecott for the winter season? Is it even considered a season? Or just hell on earth and darkness incarnate?

Stiles reached his dad’s cabin with a mind to hire Neil and evacuate himself from the situation completely. He was about to grab his messenger bag when something on the other side of the windshield caught his eye.

A dark shadow.

“Shit,” Stiles whispered.

A bear was on the porch of the cabin, its head buried in the ice chest he’d left out.

“Itsa pic-a-nic basket,” he laughed nervously, sinking down in his seat so his head was barely above the dashboard.

Great, he thought. He stayed in the cab for another ten minutes before he noticed the bear had moved on to his stash of power bars. After another ten minutes, the bear was still munching on something, and Stiles gave up. He opened the glove compartment and began shuffling through its contents. His dad had an old pack of Marlboro’s, a few lighters, an extra set of keys, and a proof of insurance that had expired in 2005. After pocketing the keys, Stiles took a look under the passenger seat and found a few maps with notes about hunting and campsites, a notebook with random pages full of numbers and dates, and an old wallet.

He heard a noise from outside the car and jumped. The bear had moved to the front of the house and was nose deep in a jar of pickles.

Stiles opened the wallet. There were no cards or IDs, no bills, but an old health insurance policy and a few pictures. His heart tensed. The first one was of his mom, probably taken when she was in college. The edges were worn down and it looked as if it had been folded in half at one point. He gulped and pulled out the second picture. It was their family portrait from when he was eight, before his mom started showing symptoms, before everything began falling apart.

Stiles thought he’d tried to wipe a tear from his eye, but before he knew it he was being jostled awake by the sound of a car horn blaring.

“Muppets and munchkins,” he shouted as hid head hit the ceiling and his eyes flew open. It took a few moments for him to orient himself, but it wasn’t long before his vision focused on the grizzly bear in front of his car as it stood on its hind legs.

The horn blared again, and Stiles turned to his left to find the source of the noise. It was Ranger Hale and the lady ranger in a park service truck. The lady ranger kept pointing at Stiles and then his steering wheel.

“You want me to honk too?” Stiles yelled. He rolled his eyes and realized they couldn’t hear him, but began laying on the horn anyway. The bear shuddered and fell to its feet, running away in the opposite direction of the house.

“Oh my God,” Stiles breathed. Had it really been that easy? “How is this possible?”

He got out of the truck and walked over to what remained of his ice chest. The rangers soon followed. Ranger Hale picked up the plastic pickle jar and held it up at Stiles like it was evidence.

“You left food out for a bear.” It wasn’t even a question and Stiles was immediately reminded of his own distaste for the ranger. All of the anger he had felt from earlier came pounding back, and this time he’d had his entire food supply gorged on by a grizzly bear. He was mad.

“You know what,” he replied. “Yeah, I let Yogi have his way with my rations. So what? The guy was craving some pickles okay? Not a lot of storks up here. Big freaking deal. I’m okay. The bear is more than okay, and I didn’t want half this food anyway. I mean come on, reindeer sausage? What the hell is that even?” Stiles grabbed the jar from a wide-eyed Hale and continued, “And you know what else? I don’t appreciate your attitude with me, Mr. Upstanding Ranger of the Year. Maybe I changed my name to avoid ethnic discrimination. You know, there are a lot of really cruel Polish jokes out there, or there used to be, I don’t know. It’s hard enough being a kid these days.” He took a breath. “And one more thing, I don’t really want to be here, and I didn’t really know my dad at all, hell, I didn’t even know he was living up here, but you were at least familiar with this case file—you knew I was up here to settle his affairs, and you didn’t even offer your condolences. So you know what, let me have my fun with the bears. I’ll be the new grizzly man. And you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Stiles let his eyes fall from Hale’s face. He didn’t want to see the man’s reaction to the ridiculous tirade he was already regretting.

“Lucy,” he heard Hale say, “I’m going to go wait in the truck.”

The lady ranger paused beside Stiles before pulling some papers out of her bag.

“Mr. Stilinski,” she said. Stiles finally noticed her deep brown eyes. They reminded him of his own. But Ranger Lucy was fair, her blond hair tied back in a braid, and Stiles imagined she cleaned up well back in the real world, maybe, when her face did not still hold traces of minor terror brought on by a bear encounter. “We came to drop off some papers for you to get started on, um, regarding the incident report and missing persons filing. Um,” she paused. Stiles looked up and saw the discomfort on her face. He smiled and nodded, holding out his hand for the folder. She half smiled and continued, “There’s also some maps, and some guides on how to get around, uh, including one on…bear safety.”

Stiles laughed, “Of course.” He grabbed the folder and pulled it open. “Is there anything I can do? Tours? Museums? You’re bound to have some sort of collection up at the mill town, right?”

“Well,” Ranger Lucy explained, “There is an archive but we don’t normally give tours apart from the street walk and ranger programs.”

Stiles nodded. “It’s just I’m a cultural anthropologist. And that mill town is about the most interesting thing I’ve seen up here. No offense.”

“There’s also some good hiking up there. Bonanza hike, Jumbo Mine hike, and the glacier is always a good one to do.”

He held up the folder, “Alright, I’ll look into it. I guess I’ll have to find something to do for the next week.” Stiles glared in the direction of the truck, eyeing Ranger Hale who was sitting in the driver’s seat staring at the trees in front of him.

“Well, I’ll be here another week. So if there is anything you need, or if you want some pointers or… _anything_ …I’ll be in the ranger’s office up the hill from the mill town, or in the visitor’s center during our open hours.”

Stiles tilted his head. “You’re leaving me alone with _him_?”

Ranger Lucy laughed and leaned in. “He’s really not that bad. And besides, you’re the grizzly man, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. That guy gets eaten alive at the end of that story.”

She winked and left him there, standing in the wreckage of his ice chest and supplies.

A few minutes later, he wondered if anyone would know that he salvaged the two unopened packets of Pop Tarts.

He gathered the rest of his undamaged things and put his hand on the doorknob. Taking a breath, he turned it and walked inside his father’s house. 


	3. In Our Family Portrait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles has a few unexpected revelations and then suddenly suspects half the population of Beacon Hills might be moving to McCarthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels really long, but I think that's just because it's sorta angsty and really, really heart wrenching. I just want to hug Stiles. I always just want to hug Stiles, but, I guess just, be warned...

Two hours after he’d picked up the remains of his ice chest and food, entered his father’s house, unpacked his things, and attempted to take a shower, Stiles was back in the truck and headed for McCarthy. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stand to be in that house, though looking around at the books, and the desk, and the subpar kitchen, ignited a curiosity in him that he didn’t want—No, it wasn’t anything to do with daddy issues or Dr. Phil or closure. It had everything to do with electricity, and getting it.

Stiles decided the place had very little charm, but it did have an appealing aesthetic in its simplicity. Basically, a one room cabin with a bathroom off the kitchen, it consisted of a battered futon up against the wall, a handful of bookshelves, a desk, and an area with a six foot countertop, a sink, a portable propane stove, and thank the gods above, a coffee pot. Stiles considered it luck that there was even a bathroom inside the cabin, let alone that there was clean running water.

After he made sure there were no more deliciously available bear treats lying around, Stiles got a big fluffy towel, and made for the shower. It wasn’t until he had stood in the back of the tub for ten minutes avoiding the ice cold water that he realized the electricity must have been turned off. No one had been paying the bill.

So he at least gave himself an icy sponge bath, redressed, and put that old radio to use, hailing Neil with his problem.

“Electricity?” Neil repeated.

“Yes,” Stiles said. “I need hot water more than anything.” There was a long period of radio silence before Neil came back on, breathy, and still laughing.

“You have to grab a gas can from the side of the house, go to town, fill it up at Howard’s place.” There was another break, and then he continued, “Put it in your generator out back. Turn it on when you want the hot water.”

And that was how Stiles found himself parking across the street from the Saloon and ordering a burger from a scowling waitress who managed to look panicked and stretched thin with her two other tables and Stiles. He got it to go, not wanting to deal with any of the locals, though he still didn’t know what that entailed, and asked where he could find Howard’s.

“He doesn’t sell to tourists,” the waitress explained with a flat, disinterested stare.

Stiles blinked. “Could you just please point me in that direction?”

So he threw his burger in the truck and drove “two blocks” down from the main street, parking in front of Jake Howard’s Body Shop that looked more akin to a Victorian brothel. He wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what it had been. He made a mental note to see if historic McCarthy had a red light district, most mining towns did. Stiles smiled as he walked up the porch, thinking the place was still a service and lube establishment. Before he even stopped in front of the door, it swung open and a man walked out, pointing at Stiles and muttering, “Come on.”

Stiles hugged the gas can and stumbled forward, following the graying man to a large shed behind the shop. “Uh, it’s good to meet you Mr. Howard, I’m Stiles Stilinski.”

“I know who you are, Neil just emailed me that you were coming.” They stopped in front of the door. “And it’s Jake. Mr. Howard is my father.”

“Oh,” Stiles murmured. “Wait,” he shook his head. “You can check your email out here? There’s internet?”

Jake raised his brow, “Why the hell wouldn’t there be internet?”

Stiles dropped his mouth open and shook his head. “I don’t even have hot water or electricity!”

“Locals get free wifi down here,” Jake explained. He was looking at Stiles expectantly when he opened the door to the shed. Stiles was still frozen in shock, unable to comprehend what seemed so completely normal to Jake. So the other man grabbed the can from Stiles’ arms and entered the shed. A few seconds later, he came out with a different can and handed it to Stiles. “Now that’s not gonna get you too far if you’re running the gen all the time. Just use it for hot water. And next time bring the tank. We’ll fill it.”

“Tank? What tank?” Stiles questioned. He and Jake began walking back to the front. Stiles struggled awkwardly to hold the can while they went.

“John has a tank out back,” the mechanic replied. He cocked his head and smiled, “You did check the tank before coming out here, right?”

"Check the tank, he says,” Stiles fumed. “No. I did not.”

Embarrassed, hungry, and smelling of diesel, Stiles left the town wondering if he was going crazy, if this was even real life. How did people live like this? Granted, there was wifi, and that had to count for something, but that could only be so recent. How did people survive under these conditions? Why did they choose it? Why did his father choose it? Because honestly, he didn’t know what _was_ worse—having to live without the creature comforts he’d spent his whole life having, or being in that desolate place completely and utterly alone. As he drove up the road to the cabin, he let himself wonder what kind of state of mind his father might have been in when he packed up and went out for a hike five months before; if maybe it wasn’t some accident or misfortune that took him, but some dark effect of all that time spent alone. For a quick second, Stiles felt sorry for his dad.

He shook himself from the thought and put the truck in park. He went around behind the cabin, and sure enough, there was a gas tank on a stand right next to the generator, and it was a little more than half full. He poured the gas can into the tank and flipped the generator on.

After a long, hot, therapeutic shower, Stiles spent an hour rummaging through his father’s papers trying to figure out what exactly the man had done with his time. He found more maps and casually glanced at the markings and notes that littered them. It seemed his dad liked to spend quite a bit of time watching the wildlife. In fact, he appeared to have quite an interest in wolf dens in the area around Kennecott and McCarthy. And by area, he realized, he meant a one hundred and seventy mile radius. Stiles moved to the bookshelf and found a few different Clive Cusslers and Stephen Kings, but his jaw dropped when he realized the other shelves were filled with dozens of books and journals on wolves. Wolf ethology. Pack dynamics. He flipped through one of the journals but stopped when his eyes hit something familiar. His breath caught in his throat.

_Two of the studies were published by J. Stilinski._

Stiles fell back on the couch and let out a tortured sigh.

His dad did have a purpose. He did have reasons for being there. It wasn’t some sorrowful banishment full of wistful memories of his dead wife and periodic guilt related to his abandonment of his son—it was a life being lived. How the hell did his dad go from law enforcement to studying wolves?

Stiles started laughing, because when he thought about it, the whole thing sounded so ridiculous. It sounded like a story with a punch line. And then he grabbed his mouth and tried to hold back the sobs, because it wasn’t a joke. This was his father. This was a man who, without Stiles’ mom, up and left him without a second thought. He couldn’t be troubled anymore with the son he so artfully convinced everyone he loved. No, because he had to study wolves.

At that thought, Stiles fell back onto the futon and rolled over. He curled into a ball and sobbed himself to sleep, reliving every memory he had with his father with disgust and resentment.

 

 

In the morning, Stiles found himself getting breakfast back at the Saloon, too sick to his stomach with hunger to care what might happen with the locals. He brought along a few of the journals, his curiosity greater than his resentment, at least before his first cup of coffee. He could see what the deal was with wolves, and maybe try to understand why John Stilinski devoted his life to them. After nervously coughing out his order of a reindeer scramble, he began flipping through an article about the unique nature of a wolf’s howl, when someone’s shadow fell on text in front of him.

He glanced up and met the probing eyes of man he didn’t recognize. He was older, late sixties, complete with balding grey hair and beady, dark eyes.

“You must be John Stilinski’s son,” the man said with a confident smile. Stiles got a weird feeling about the guy, but pulled his hand from his lap and extended it.

“By blood only,” he half smiled. Stiles shook the man’s hand and blinked a few times expectantly before saying, “I didn’t pick up the town roster so I’m at a disadvantage with your name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Gerard. Gerard Argent.” And there was that smile again. Assured, and followed with a calculated glance when Stiles recognized the name. “You went to high school with my granddaughter.”

Stiles licked his lips and nodded, “Sure did. What a great girl…didn’t finish out her time there though, if I remember correctly.” Stiles left out that his best friend meticulously stalked the poor girl for months before the family up and left Beacon Hills for Montana. It left Scott pretty broken up for the summer of their junior year. It had been a pretty disastrous summer, though, to begin with, after all those grizzly animal attacks the area had been having. Mountain lions were a real problem up there, and that was just another reason Stiles loved San Diego.

Argent nodded, and as if sensing Stiles thoughts, commented, “My son felt after all those attacks, that his family might be safer elsewhere. But they’ve always moved around. It’s what we do.”

“And what exactly, uh, is that?”

“We sell guns,” Argent replied.

Stiles gulped.

“May I sit with you?”

“Uh,” Stiles looked down at the articles he was reading and then back at Argent. “Sure. Why not?” He closed the journal and set it to the side, smiling and wracking his mind for something to say, anything, something to get that knowing look off Argent’s face.

“Studying the wolves, I see,” he remarked. “More like your father than you’d think.”

“Actually,” Stiles bit his lip, “I just picked these up. I really don’t know anything about them. I didn’t even realize there were so many here, I mean, with all the bears. I guess they cohabitate somehow.”

“Your father knew the wolves were going to be a problem,” Argent explained.

Stiles scoffed, “Wolves? A problem? Seems to me it’s the bears everybody should worry about. They’re ravenous.”

Argent let out a chuckle and leaned onto the table. “Everybody knows how to handle the bears.” Stiles rolled his eyes. “But wolves,” Argent whispered and leaned in closer. “Not very many people know what do when a wolf is out for blood.”

Stiles’ arm twitched and he thanked his stars that the waitress came with his breakfast in that moment, because he didn’t want to hear anything more about wolves and blood from a man who’s family sold high end rifles and semi-automatics for a living.

Argent smiled at the girl, who nodded and said, “Gerard”, before turning back to Stiles with a muted stare. “Anything else?”

“No. Nope, fine here. Sitting on top of the world.”

She walked away and Argent stood up just as Stiles took his first bite of eggs. “Well, I’ll let you eat your breakfast in peace. You should definitely come by in a few days. Allison and her father are flying in on Friday. I’m sure she’d love to have an old friend to pass the time with while we’re off doing business.”

Stiles forced a smile and said, “Sure thing, sir,” through the cheesy deliciousness in his mouth. After Argent left the Saloon, Stiles rolled his eyes and begrudgingly forked more of the scramble in his mouth. How was this his life? The Argents? In Alaska? In McCarthy? Stiles hang out with Allison, the queen bee who rose to popularity and became Lydia Martin’s best friend just as quick as she became her mortal enemy? Scott was going to flip out when he told him. Oh…but he had yelled at Scott. Didn’t matter, Stiles thought. The best revenge would be instagram-ing a picture of him and Allison from his iPad and tagging Scott in it. He concluded that would be his reward for suffering through another encounter with the older Argent. Jeez, he thought. Argents up in Alaska. And Gerard Argent knew Stiles’ dad. He knew about the wolves. What was that about? And what kind of business were they going to be doing in a town with a population of 29?

Stiles finished up, paid and then headed across the “street” to the general store where he forked over $40 for a handful of items.

“Seven dollars for a bag of Bugles? I didn’t know they even still made Bugles!” he exclaimed at the check stand.

“Obviously they still make them because we sell them,” the clerk snapped. Needless to say, Stiles didn’t buy the Bugles. On his way out, he was looking down into his bag to make sure he got plain yoghurt, when he ran into the door.

Scratch that. He ran into a person.

“So sorry,” he squawked, looking up to apologize again but stopping short when his eyes met Ranger Hale’s. “Oh,” Stiles mewed.

Hale stepped to the side and threw his arm out, motioning for Stiles to pass. Instead of doing that, Stiles held up his hand, and tried desperately to formulate something, anything, a statement of purpose or an apology for his rant the day before. But Hale jerked forward, a motion insisting that Stiles walk past. So he did. And after taking a few steps on the store’s patio, he looked back, just to see if that whole situation had really happened, and then jumped when he saw that Hale was still staring at him.

“You know it’s rude to stare!” Stiles chided. If Ranger Hale didn’t want to use his big boy words, then Stiles wasn’t going to even try to hide his displeasure at seeing the man. Hale narrowed his eyes and walked into the store, probably to buy Bugles or something else that made Stiles cringe. He didn’t acknowledge that his gaze fell from the back of the ranger’s head to—nope, Stiles had to get back to his dead father’s one room cabin. He had things to do.

And he didn’t care if it got people’s attention when he suddenly broke into a sprint on the way to the truck, or that he was nervously singing “Enter Sandman” for half the ride back.

 

 

Stiles spent the day cleaning things up, organizing the cabin in a way that suited him, and attempting to fill out the forms Ranger Lucy had given him. But honestly? There were things on there—facts, questions—that Stiles couldn’t answer. He didn’t have a recent physical description of his father, hell, the guy could’ve lost an eye in a bear attack and worn an eye patch for all Stiles knew.

When was he last seen? Weren’t these the facts Ranger Camwell had put together when he was notified of John Stilinski’s disappearance? The more he thought about it, the more he kicked himself for ever thinking this would be as simple as a week spent signing papers and answering questions. In Stiles’ mind, it was going to be like going to the DMV, but in Alaska. And now, as he started comprehending the “steps” Ranger Hale had described, Stiles gulped, suspecting Neil might be right, that this whole song and dance would in fact take all winter. And it would heel-toe-dosey-doe right across what was left of his heart.

After going through five pages and only answering six questions, Stiles decided he’d had enough, and was going back up to the mill town to straighten out the situation. He just had too many questions about what the process was going to be and why Ranger Hale had to be the guy in charge. Wasn’t the FBI responsible for missing persons? Stiles was sure there was something else he could be doing instead of filing forms at a remote ranger station that ran on solar power and diesel fuel.

By the time he got up there, things seemed to be shutting down for the day, and he found Ranger Lucy in the visitor’s center cleaning a display cabinet of artifacts.

“Hey, hey,” Stiles chimed. “Is Ranger Sour Face around?”

Lucy tried to mask her smile with a cough and replied, “No, he went home for the day. What do you need?”

“I was having trouble with the forms you guys gave me, and I want to clarify a few things before I tried to answer the rest of the questions.”

“Let me take a look. Maybe I can help,” she shrugged. Stiles handed her the papers, and watched as she read through them in about twenty seconds.

“Your dad’s last known residence was in Beacon Hills?” Lucy asked.

Stiles sighed, “Well, yeah, I just put that since I didn’t really know what, uh, street his cabin is on…or if it’s even considered a street…or a cabin…”

“Huh,” she mused.

“What? What is it?”

Lucy tilted her head and answered, “Well I know Ranger Hale was originally from there, before he got into the program back east.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles bellowed. Lucy jumped so he apologized for freaking out. “I just can’t believe it. Wait, now that you mention it, yeah, you’re right. Oh my god, his house, I mean, his family, it all burned up.” Stiles felt a clench in his chest. “They all died. Wow, just…Wow.” He felt sick for a second, and definitely felt a little different about the guy after remembering that. It had happened right around the same time his mom died—almost exactly when his dad left.

“I heard something about that from a friend of mine who did federal law enforcement training with Derek. I guess he’d been arrested in connection with something to do with the fire a few years later, but the charges were eventually dropped.”

Stiles blinked. “Derek freaking Hale. Wow. Second person connected to Beacon Hills I’ve met up here. Just, wow. Wait so he’s a fed? How does _that_ work?”

Lucy smiled, “Well, he’s not like me! I’m just a seasonal worker, Stiles. Most park service do administrative duties and what not, but he’s in the park police. That’s why he stays here during the off season. He’s not here to run things, he’s here to patrol and police.”

“So that’s why he’s on the case? He’s the best the park service can give me?”

“He’s the only thing you’re gonna get unless something turns up that makes the case more concrete.”

Like a body, Stiles thought. Or a piece of a body.

Stiles talked a bit more with Lucy before she had to close up the visitor’s center. She invited him up to her house for dinner to discuss a hiking plan for Stiles, and he gladly accepted, figuring she had to have something better than yoghurt or Pop Tarts a bear passed over. After she said she’d meet him up there, he walked back down to where he parked, repeating the directions to her bungalow in his head, like it was possible to get lost on the one road, and then drove up.

There were ten or so homes up there that he had seen, most of them uniform to the others, but some were private and some were park owned. Stiles still had trouble wrapping his head around the land and property situation in the park, but it made sense when the park had only been a park since 1980. When he stopped at the house, he realized he might’ve given off the wrong vibe to Lucy, but he shook the thought away with the idea that surely boredom was her main motivator. Oh, and kindness, after all, she wasn’t a local.

As he made his way around to the back of the house, he yelled, “Lucy, I’m hooomee,” but his laugh quickly turned into a gasp when he rounded the corner of the building and saw a Greek god in the flesh. Stiles grabbed his eyes to make sure they were still there, because that man’s chest was sharper and more toned that anything he’d ever seen—and he was from—good God, it was Ranger Hale, and he was picking some herbs or something from a potted garden. Stiles closed his mouth. Derek Hale was shirtless. And now he was staring at Stiles, whose plan to be open and abrupt with his discontentment toward the ranger was failing miserably as his supposed immeasurable displeasure was replaced with barely masked, unbridled lust.

Just then, Lucy walked up from behind him, smiling and looking from Hale to Stiles and then back to the Adonis.

Her smile got bigger. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

 

 


	4. I See Trouble on the Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the hell, Stiles thought. What the holy hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's about how I feel. I didn't get this to end where I wanted it to end, but I looked down and holy crap, 12 pages for this chapter alone... and 4500 words became 6800 words in like, a scene. So here you go *wipes forehead*. Stiles is exhausted by the end of this chapter and...so am I. Unbeta'd and probably a bit awkward. Apologies.

“What can I do to help?” Stiles asked. He stood next to Lucy in her kitchen and watched as she peeled potatoes into a bowl. Derek had disappeared to the other house, probably to procure a shirt of some kind, with the promise of bringing back a surprise he’d picked up from the general store.

“Maybe you could toss up a salad?” Lucy glanced at the fridge and pointed to it with her nose. “I think there are still some cucumbers and maybe some feta?”

Stiles smiled, “Now you’re talking.”

And then they fell into casual conversation while they prepped the food. Stiles inquired into Lucy’s life, and was ecstatic to discover she was an environmental studies major from Oregon who was focusing on the glacial change in the park. She promised him pictures of glaciers from the 1920s that he could take with him on hikes and compare to the present day reality. The more he talked to Lucy about the park, the more he warmed up to the idea of going out into it. Maybe he wasn’t into hiking—thinking it was a tedious and non-gratifying form of self torture—but the things Lucy was saying, the countless vistas she described that littered these hikes, the way it felt to stand on top of a mountain and see the space below that you conquered, to lose yourself in your surroundings only to find yourself again—suddenly Stiles kind of wanted it. And he wasn’t just humoring her anymore when he talked about planning a hike.

They moved on to talking about Kennecott and the archives, and Lucy caved in and agreed to show him, but made sure he had low expectations as far as the collection of artifacts was concerned. This segued into Stiles ranting about private collections in Arizona, and prompted him to explain a bit of his college life and work as an anthropologist in Arizona.

“Oh, wow,” Lucy stopped. “You know Derek did a year at the Grand Canyon before he came up here.” There was a sudden noise of bags being dropped on a table, and then Derek Hale was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, glaring at Stiles, or maybe that was just his face and there was no ill feeling being directed toward—no, yeah, he was glaring. He was in fact now wearing a shirt, a very clingy long-sleeved henley of some sort, and man, Stiles thought, he could really wear…a shirt.

“I was just telling Stiles about your work at the Grand Canyon—”

“North Rim,” Derek interrupted, seemingly irritated at its mention.

Lucy smiled, “Right. Where all the really ‘serious about nature’ people go.”

Stiles capped the dressing bottle and laughed, “You can still do some pretty awesome things at the South Rim, and it’s more accessible.” Derek turned around and walked back into the dining room, and Stiles let out a mild huff before his eyes fell to—and nope, no, he was admiring the original hard wood floors of the home. In fact, he should ask Lucy about them…but when Derek wandered back into the kitchen, Stiles couldn’t stop himself from pressing, “So, uh, how is it that you found yourself up here? Was it completely out of your hands?”

And then Stiles felt a blush creep over his neck when he let himself glance at Derek’s hands as they set a tupperware on the counter.

“I requested a post in Wrangell. There was an opening for the winter season.”

Stiles licked his lips and nodded, “Oh, right, okay. Yeah, I mean, who wouldn’t want to be up here in the dead of winter? Surrounded by lots and lots of…nature. Very natural, and very...cold.”

Derek shook his head and admitted, “I don’t like dealing with yuppie tourists.”

 “Well,” Stiles grinned. “I’m sure you get along great with the locals, from what I hear, they have a similar mind set about, uh, I think Neil called us ‘interlopers’.”

And then Lucy asked Derek what he got from the store, which paved the way for her mild squeals of joy when he pulled out a cake. “One of Sheila’s,” he said. “As a going away,” he added quietly. And so went the rest of the cooking, the mashing of potatoes by Stiles, the grilling of the chicken outside by Derek, and the beaming smiles Lucy couldn’t contain as she made make-shift garlic bread on hot dog buns.

When they finally sat down at the table, Stiles was actually excited to dig in to his first home cooked Alaskan dinner.

As he forked some salad absentmindedly into his mouth, he commented on the weather thus far, and Neil’s overreaction to his lack of luggage. Lucy merely interjected that “In Alaska, you should be prepared for anything,” which sent Stiles on a tirade about bears that went uninterrupted for almost five minutes.

“Do you ever know when to stop talking?” Derek voiced when Stiles took a breath and shoved a piece of garlic-bun in his mouth.

“Yeah,” and Stiles chewed, narrowing his eyes at the ranger and trying to decide if he wanted another bite of garlic-bun or to dole out a new ill-fated rant at his grumpy dinner companion. But really, it was out of his hands after he saw the look of extreme amusement on Lucy’s face. “Maybe I just don’t want to, or you know, maybe I should revert to that oh-so-tried-and-true method of conveying information—that gloriously intense stare down you seem to be so fond of.”

And was he really surprised when Lucy snorted and Derek continued to scowl at him from across the table? No, he wasn’t surprised, and he was just getting started.

 “Oh, come on man, really put your eyebrows into it to get the full effect.” Stiles mimicked his glare and snarled at him from the across the table.

Derek threw his napkin on his plate and stood up. Turning to Lucy, he mumbled, “I’m going for a run.”

Her grin faded. “What about the cake?”

“Give me an hour,” he said. He turned toward Stiles and shot him a dark glare. “I’ll be back.”

He and Lucy watched Derek exit the room. Then their eyes met and they burst into cackling laughter.

“Oh my god,” Stiles breathed. His sides were starting to hurt from laughing too hard.

Lucy started shaking her head. 

"What," Stiles managed to get out. 

“I’ve seen him deal with a lot of different kinds of people, but I’ve never seen him lose it like that.”

“He—” Stiles started. Derek Hale actually liked living in a deserted mill town in Alaska; he actually made a habit of long flat, stares at squirming strangers; and he presumably enjoyed cold, dark winters spent alone. What did that say about him? It said to Stiles that they had absolutely nothing in common and they were probably going to continue to rub each other the wrong way. Or perhaps rub each other a--nope. “He's going to torment me the entire time I'm here,” he explained to a smirking Lucy, “It will be torture.”

“Hmm,” Lucy replied. “I guess we’ll see.”

Stiles wanted to point out that she was leaving in less than a week and would probably not witness the horror that the evolution of the Derek and Stiles Stare-down would inevitably become, but he honestly didn’t want to think about the coming days—when he would actually be alone with Derek. Eager to change the subject, Stiles brought up a previously mentioned class that Lucy took on environmental ethics and so spared himself anymore grief over the lady ranger’s declaration. They cleaned up the table and Stiles offered to do the dishes while Lucy went upstairs and changed out of her ranger uniform.

After lathering up the plates, his mind began to wander back to what exactly he and Derek were going to have to do—as far as his father was concerned. He shook his head and rinsed a plate. Maybe it would take a few weeks of filling out paperwork, interviewing a few people, checking out some locations, but whatever it entailed, Stiles was about to lose the one person he’d actually made a connection with…and then he’d be just like Derek—alone.

“Lost in thought?” Lucy asked. She’d walked up behind Stiles and grabbed the plate he’d been continuously scrubbing for two minutes.

“Nah, just thinking.”

She laughed, “One in the same my friend.”

That got a smile out of Stiles, who wanted to distract himself from Lucy’s departure, so he asked about her plans for the following day. Once he promised to come back up to the mill town for her 11:00 am ranger program of which she was sure he would be the only participant, an awkward silence fell over the room, and Stiles couldn’t stand it. So he started humming a CCR song, but stopped in concern when Lucy rushed out of the room.

Less than a minute later, “Bad Moon Rising” was blasting from the sitting room, and Lucy had returned, shaking her hips and mouthing the words. They half danced in front of the sink while they finished the dishes, and then shimmied into the sitting room by the time the song had ended.

As they sat there smiling, Stiles looked outside and noticed it was starting to get dark, and suggested that he should probably get going lest he get lost on the one road that would look unfamiliar in the darkness.

“Won’t you stay for cake?” Lucy pleaded.

Stiles sighed, “I think that would be unwise, my dear.”

Lucy seemed to give up and frowned. “Well,” she perked, “at least take some of the vegetables we picked today? There’s no way I’m going to use them all in the next week.”

That got them up and back in the kitchen, sorting through various greens, and reds, and surprisingly yellows. It was then that Derek decided to come back, recently showered and in different clothes—just as tight—than before.

Stiles had inquired about the garden, if they had started it or if it was a ranger thing already passed down from summer season to summer season.

“Well, it was mostly Derek’s idea,” Lucy said. “There’s stuff in there I’ve never heard of. I had to convince him to give me space for my veggies.”

Stiles raised a brow and looked at the other ranger. He actually seemed a bit uncomfortable with his crossed arms and tilted head. “Alaska natives harnessed medicinal uses for hundreds of different plants,” Derek stated flatly.

Stiles’ grin widened as he looked at Lucy. “You’ve got your own little pharmacy up here then, huh?”

Clenching his jaw, Derek explained, “I’d rather walk outside and pick a plant to stop a headache than drive to town and pay $20 for a bottle of Tylenol.”

Stiles put up his hands and shook his head, “No, no, that is really awesome. You’re right about that place, they literally charge arms and legs for their products.” He let out a nervous laugh and gathered up his bag of produce. “So I will see you tomorrow at 11,” he smiled at Lucy, who still looked like she didn’t want him to leave just yet. “And you,” Stiles turned to Derek. “I need to get some info from you before I can fill out those forms. I’m really at a loss with some of those questions and if you could just give me thirty minutes, I know you said you couldn’t devote a single second until next week—”

“I can drop off Ranger Camwell’s notes,” Derek suggested.

And Stiles blinked. “What was that?” he asked. “There are, uh, notes? Written documentation? Actual hard copies of information on this whole thing, that have been in existence and sitting around collecting dust?”

Derek sighed, “Yes, Stiles, that’s what notes are. Even you could gleam the answers you need from them and fill out the case forms. I have meetings all day tomorrow but I will try to bring them by before the end of the day.” Stiles stared at him, really just frozen in the wake of Derek’s sudden helpfulness, which true to form, he still managed to convey with mild annoyance.

So Stiles said goodnight, and drove back to the cabin with more optimism than he’d had since landing in Fairbanks. He decided it wasn’t going to be that bad having to work with Derek Hale, because despite his complete and utter inability to use facial muscles for any positive emotions, the man at least seemed to want to do his job.

 

 

The next morning, Stiles attempted to toast a pair of Pop Tarts on the outdoor grill, succeeding only in charring one side of them to a crisp, while he simultaneously freaked out when he saw the outdoor temperature was 41 degrees. He turned the generator on long enough to charge his smartphone and brew a pot of coffee, though he suspected the coffee would be a little off considering it was more than five months old and opened. He was a bit too tired and cold to care. He dawned a pair of long underwear under his clothes, grabbed his jacket and gloves, and headed out to town in hopes of acquiring the mythic wifi signal.

Despite the glare the waitress gave him, she ended up telling him the password and BAM, Stiles had access to his life again. Though, as he scrolled though his email, he realized he hadn’t missed much in the few days spent off the grid, apart from a killer summer clearance sale at the local board shop. His eyes bulged when he saw the sale prices. Damnit, he thought. Scott better be on this. 

Stiles opened Skype and tried calling Scott twice, first leaving him a short message of  “Call me back” and then, “I’m sorry I exploded at you the other day. Can you stop by the Bunker and check out the sale? Also, you’re gonna die. You will not believe me when I tell you who is up here. And then, when you’ve grasped that first shockingly dramatic comprehension, I will tell you exactly who is going to be up here. And then you’ll really die. You’re going to wish you were here. And I’ll take pictures. I will take so many pictures and let me tell you, you’re not gonna like it but you’re gonna like it.”

“Boy, I’m not sure what I’m walking into but you do realize you are in a public place?” Neil chided from behind him.

Stiles jumped and hung up the call. “Woah that,” he pointed at the phone, “is really not what you think it is.”

“Yeah, okay,” Neil replied. He patted Stiles on the back and changed the subject. “I saw your rig outside and thought I’d let you know I put some caribou meat in your food box under the cabin, where your food is supposed to be stored—where bears can’t get to it.”

Stiles pushed his lips together and nodded. “Wait,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “How did you know about the bear thing? Did Ranger Hale tell you? Because let me say, he has absolutely no real idea of what was happening and I think—”

“Don Stephens found some bear skat on his property with Costco meat labels in it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

“Eww, okay, that’s just,” Stiles started. A little too much information, but okay, at least the rangers—more specifically Ranger Hale—weren’t having laughs somewhere at Stiles expense. Actually, Stiles doubted Derek Hale had laughs anywhere. Ever. At any expense. He glanced back at Neil, who was full on smiling, and thanked him for the food. “I don’t even know what I can make with that.”

The mountain man shrugged. “I like to mix it in with a Hamburger Helper. Only I call it Santa’s Little Helper.”

Stiles stared at him for a few seconds. “Oh,” he understood. “Caribou are reindeer. Santa’s little helper…that’s just, kinda oddly disturbing and making me feel weird about my childhood.”

“Glad I could help,” Neil smiled. He waved goodbye and left Stiles packing up his things and ready to head up to Kennecott for the day. He forgot to point out to Neil that he was breaking in his new all terrain boots, or that he was planning on hiking up to one of the mines later that day. Stiles smiled. Neil probably wouldn’t care anyway.

When he met up with Lucy outside the visitor’s center, he wasn’t expecting her to rush him down to the basement of the building and throw him into a dark room without so much as a “Good morning”. A few seconds after his eyes adjusted, he made out a big expanse of a room that had skeleton walls and a pair of big double doors, one of which Lucy was unlocking when she whispered, “Come on, Stiles.”

“Why are we whispering?” he replied.

She giggled, “I don’t know.”

She opened the door and disappeared into the darkness behind it. Then a light turned on and Stiles followed her in. There were eight rows of large shelves, all littered with artifacts, and some of the aisles between them housed bigger things like wheels, barrels, and…wait, “Is that a communal urinal?”

“Yeah,” Lucy answered as they stood in front of the long, rusted artifact. “It’s from the bunkhouse next door.” Stiles laughed and continued looking around, enamored with the condition of some of the items. There were school desks and kitchen utensils, and lots and lots of old tobacco pouches. On one table, a few different pieces of jewelry were on display, and Stiles' eyes fell to a green pendant. "That's an odd one," Lucy interrupted and grabbed the necklace. She fingered the copper chain and held it up to Stiles. "They used copper instead of silver or cold, and the stone is Alaskan jade."

Stiles turned it over in his hand. "That is unusual, isn't it. Beautiful though."

“Look over here,” Lucy pointed to a shelf of bottles. Stiles put down the necklace and let her hand him a one of the bottles. “This is Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. Look there on the bottom, you can still see remnants of the sauce discoloring the glass.”

“Wow,” Stiles said. “That’s…have they tried dating this? Bottles are very distinctive. I bet they could accurately date it to the year, maybe even month.”

Lucy shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they don’t have the resources for that.” Most of the artifacts, Stiles learned, were found out of context and were therefore almost useless. Even worse, some of the items in the archives were originally looted years before, and returned anonymously with no hope of ever finding the context they were discovered in. But when he started to get upset about the lack of development in the history and culture of the place, Lucy pulled something out of a box and handed it to Stiles.

It was a small carving of a man, about six inches high, simple enough, and only wearing a hat. Stiles glanced at Lucy and waited for the object’s description. He watched as a mischievous grin creeped across her face and her hand pulled a string at the bottom of the carving. A small cylinder piece popped out of the man’s abdomen, and Lucy grabbed the hand Stiles had wrapped around it, and forced him to turn the carving sideways.

“That’s—”

“An erection?” Lucy laughed. “Yeah.”

Stiles let out a chuckle of amazement. “Wow, what a, I mean, this is really some find. Did this have context? Where did they find it?”

“It was probably carved by a miner in the bunkhouse.”

“A really bored, really horny miner,” Stiles grinned. “That definitely just made my day.”

Lucy smiled back. “Good, I’m glad.” She placed the R-rated carving back in its box and said, “We better get back up before someone notices I’m gone.”

And it was only a few minutes later that Stiles found himself walking out of town and up the trail marked “Bonanza Mine”. Lucy assured him it was a shorter, less brush-filled version of the Jumbo Mine hike, and yielded views just as amazing. She also admitted there probably wouldn’t be anybody else up there hiking.

“So if I fall and break my legs, no one is gonna find me? I mean, a bear would find me, but—promise me you’ll send someone to come find me!”

“Stiles.”

He walked through the tree lined path at a pace he felt was comfortable enough but also showed his nerves, wait, why was he nervous? It was just glorified walking.

So he made his way up. And up.

Up, up, up, up.

And up some more.

Until he stopped being surprised that around every bend in the trail was another uphill climb. After the first two hours, he didn’t even feel tired anymore. He was just lost in his own mind, thinking about the artifacts, all the work that needed to be done at the mill town—and then he thought about Lucy, and the glaciers, and how the park would probably keep drastically changing with every new year. Stiles considered himself lucky to be experiencing it, and huh, that’s funny, because when did he start liking the mountains?

He started to see remnant structures, he assumed of the mine car tram, and oh wow, was that—it was—a snow bank up ahead. Stiles decided to stop for lunch in a relatively flat clearing that was surrounded by waist high bushes with scattered grassy patches here and there.

And man, did he pick the right spot. It had great views of the glacier below, and the massive mounds of dirt and debris that were a part of it. Across the valley was Mount Blackburn, but he couldn’t quite make it out behind the clouds. He noticed how much cooler it was now that he’d climbed above the tree line, so he zipped up his jacked and ate his power bar and turkey sandwich as fast as he could, eager to get moving again.

The next hour and half was spent on more rocky terrain, and at long last he rose above the clouds that had hidden Bonanza Peak and finally could see where he was headed—the mine. And what torture that was, to see where you were going and how long you still had to go before you’d get there.

Stiles stopped by a small creek, grabbed his water bottle, drank the rest of it, and leaned against a rock in an attempt to stretch out his calves.

“Hmm,” he half moaned and closed his eyes.

“You should have packed more water.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles flailed, losing his water bottle down the side of the trail, and almost losing himself as his balance waivered. A few feet up the incline stood a man, in his forties, who gazed at Stiles like he was a gold nugget—er, copper, isn’t that what they mined up there? “Wow, okay,” Stiles breathed. “Way to sneak up on me there.”

The man smiled, and it kinda made Stiles a bit uneasy, and it made him even more uncomfortable because it also showed him the obvious attractiveness of the man’s features, and yeah, he was kind of ruggedly handsome. He had longish blond hair pulled behind a beanie, and was rocking the seven day beard. And was that flannel under his dark jacket? Oh god, what if there were suspenders?

Stiles smiled awkwardly.

“I wasn’t expecting to see anyone today,” the man said, still giving Stiles the eye that either said ‘I know something you don’t know’ or ‘I’m having you for dinner’, or maybe a twisted combination of the two.

“Yeah, neither was I…”

The man stepped forward and held out his hand, “I’m Peter.”

Stiles took it without a second thought and replied, “Stiles.” He let go and glanced up at the mine, “I’m headed up there. Got any pointers for me? Secret passages?”

Peter let out a noise that sounded like a laugh, but hadn’t quite become one. “I didn’t like it up there.” And Stiles didn’t know what to say to that so he nodded. “But,” Peter continued, “I’m not sorry I came this way. You know, this kind of thing,” he breathed in and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he gazed back at Stiles. Then his eyes fell to Stiles’ throat as he said, “This can be transformative.”

“I bet,” Stiles thought aloud. He was equally alarmed and intrigued with the man in front of him, but decided he didn’t want to be in such close proximity while they were alone on a mountaintop. So he gave Peter a half wave and announced, “Well, I’m off. Have a good hike down.”

Peter smiled and said, “You too, Stiles.”

He went a good minute or so before he couldn’t stop himself and looked back down the trail, only to freeze in place when he saw that Peter hadn’t moved and was watching him ascend. He tilted his head in acknowledgment and then kept hiking forward, because honestly? He had to get away from that guy, even if Peter wanted his ass and not his blood, it still felt a little to Dracula for Stiles to be comfortable.

Once he got around a bend in the trail, he let out a long sigh and slowed his pace. It was another thirty minutes before he reached the top of the mountain, and the structure of the mine.

Discarded lumber was everywhere, and broken, rusted metal lay scattered among the boards. But two sides of the skeleton remained, and Stiles was impressed they were able to build something so massive a hundred years before, and in such a remote place. Hell, if McCarthy was remote, what did it make this place? He sat down for a while and just marveled at the view, at the steep downgrades of the gulch, the snow bank that traced it, and the distance between where he was and where he saw the tree line begin. He had come so far. The glacial valley stretched out before him, and in a moment, he allowed himself to feel his own insignificance. It should have been scary, but it wasn’t. It was actually kind of freeing.

Stiles walked around and found an area that was riddled with pieces of ore. None of them were whole copper, but he could tell some had a good percentage of it, as they had that rusted teal color like the Statue of Liberty. He picked a few up and put them in his pockets, but when he turned around to walk to the other vista, that’s when he saw it—a patch of color in a bleak grey backdrop. It was a grouping of small, purple flowers huddled together on an outcropping in the rocks. Stiles climbed up to it and marveled at the little things, picking one and trying to smell it, only to sneeze and almost fall down. He picked a few more and pressed them into his wallet, intent on figuring out what they were and how they survived under such conditions. After a few more minutes of looking around and being proud of himself, he started the descent back down.

And fuck.

Stiles was a mess of emotions after forty minutes. His knees were killing him, his quads were on fire, and if it hadn’t been for those boots Neil insisted he get, which covered and supported his ankles, Stiles would’ve probably sprained his ankle and rolled off the cliff and fallen into a snow bank ages ago. And he knew it was only just beginning. He knew he had so much further to go but he could barely take the strain as it was. Why the hell was he here again? Because some stupid Park Ranger wouldn’t help him, was making him wait, and wouldn’t just admit the obvious, that something had happened to Stiles’ father. Who was Derek Hale to do this to Stiles? And why had he listened to Lucy, sweet and slightly devious Lucy, when she said, “It’ll be no problem for you, Stiles. You’re fit.” Fuck them, Stiles thought. And while he was at it, why not let his dad take the blunt of blame? After all he was the whole reason Stiles was even in Alaska in the first place.

Just as he was about to cuss out Ranger Camwell for calling him in the first place, Stiles’ foot hit a rock and he tumbled down the path. He rolled over a few times until he pushed his hands out and stopped himself from gaining anymore momentum. There he panted, on his hands and knees, and slowly tried to calm his breathing, because he felt an attack coming on—he felt the constriction, the pounding in his chest louder than ever—and he felt like he was going crazy.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, on all fours and panting, but by the time he got up and slowly started walking down the trail, his hands were bleeding from being pressed into the rocky surface, and his side was starting to hurt from the fall. Stiles didn’t care. He just told himself it was going to be okay. He would make it down the trail slowly, he would make it, and everything wasn’t as bad as he could make it out to be. He’d seen red, had a panic attack on top of a mountain, and now he could breathe again.

He sighed and trudged forward.

Another hour into the descent, and he let gravity take hold of his body and sped up the pace. At one point, he stopped being able to feel his feet, which was good because he figured he had half a dozen blisters…but he was back to loving life and loving the views. He even started whistling, and thinking about reading up on some of the area’s history, and yeah, he needed to look up those crazy flowers. By the time he reached the mill town, it was almost 7:00 pm, the light was fading from the sky, and he was ready for a shower and a meal and a good old fashioned session of passing-the-hell-out.

He popped his head in the window of the visitor’s center and saw that Lucy was still there, deeply engrossed in a book. When she saw him, she waved and hurried out.

“You made it!” she smiled.

“Ha,” Stiles cried. “Of course I did. What a walk in the park. You should’ve let me do the harder one.” Lucy smacked his shoulder, and Stiles whined.

“Tell me really, how do you feel? How was it?”

Stiles shook his head, “You know, it had its ups and downs, literally and figuratively, and at one point I thought I was going to die, but…I don’t know, it wasn’t so bad. I think I have some killer blisters though.”

Lucy frowned. “Do you want me to take a look? I could wrap them for you?”

“No, no,” Stiles replied. “I just want to get back and go to bed. Thanks though.”

Lucy fussed over him for a few more minutes before she let him hobble back to the truck.

“Oh, and Stiles?” she called. He turned back and waved. She shouted back, “Tomorrow, you and me—open mic night at the saloon. It starts at 9!”

Before he could even process what she’d said, Lucy disappeared back into the visitor’s center.

 

When he put the truck in park outside his dad’s cabin, it was almost dark, and his stomach was grumbling at him. So after he cranked the generator on, he decided to see just what Neil had put in the food box, and meandered to the side of the house to the thing that was really a very tiny cellar. He pulled out something labeled “hamburger” from the ice chest and figured he’d give it a try, reindeer or not.

He opened the door of the house, flipped on the light and walked into the kitchen, setting down the meat and wondering if his dad might’ve had a box of Hamburger Helper. Stiles laughed at the thought of Neil’s horrible joke from that morning, and turned to go wash his hands in the bathroom.

“Stiles.”

He jumped and flew back a few feet into the counter at the sight of Derek Hale sitting upright on the futon across the room. He wasn’t in uniform, but he'd squared his shoulders and kept his spine straight. Stiles realized Derek had loosened up a great deal the night before, but that was probably Lucy putting him at ease. 

“Was that really necessary, Derek? God, you just let yourself in and lay in wait for me. Wow,” Stiles breathed. “What. A. Creeper.”

“I told you I was coming by tonight,” Derek said, ignoring Stiles’ last comment and holding up a binder. “I brought the notes for you,” he explained. Then he tapped his hand on a box in his lap and continued, “And I brought a hiking first aid kit for your feet. Lucy radioed that you might need some moleskin.”

Stiles felt a little bit of remorse for the creeper comment when it dawned on him that Derek was there to help him. “Yeah, actually. My feet are killing me. Let me wash up and then we can, uh, get to it.”

He rushed into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. Washing his hands, he felt the sting of soap on the open cuts in his palms, and sighed. He stared at his reflection, and wow, he looked tired, no, he looked like someone had dragged him through hell. Alaska, he thought, same thing.

 He walked back out into the main room and stood in front of Derek.

“So, thanks for bringing this stuff by, I mean, I know you aren’t obligated to do this.” Derek’s eyebrows raised and his shoulders fell, and he almost looked a little shocked at Stiles’ words. Stiles was too tired to try and get more out of him, so he shrugged out of his jacket and continued, “You can leave the moleskin and I’ll do myself up after I cook dinner.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Derek protested. “Do you even know how to do this?” He held up the wraps in his hand. Before Stiles could answer, Derek had swung his arm up and pulled the other man down onto the futon, removing himself as he did it and kneeling on the ground in front of Stiles.

“I’m serious,” Stiles started, but cringed when Derek shoved off his shoes and they rubbed against the sensitive blisters. “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he cried as his socks were peeled off. And yeah, his feet looked pretty beaten, and what? Derek’s hands were lingering on his ankles, and wow, okay, those were serious bruises his shoes had left there.

“It looks like you got in a fight,” Derek muttered as he tore off a piece of moleskin and looked for a similar sized blister to cover. His hands were probing and they weren’t rough but they weren’t gentle either. Stiles wondered if that was just for feet or if—and, no, Derek had said something, hadn’t he?

“You should see the other guy,” Stiles joked. He stared down at the out of uniform ranger, who was staring intently at his battered feet, and that’s when something started bothering him. “Hey, Derek, where did you park?”

“Hmm,” the other man replied, the roll of tape in his mouth.

Stiles frowned. “I didn’t see another car outside when I drove in.”

Derek reached up and grabbed the tape, pulled off a piece and put it over the first application. He turned his gaze to Stiles, and wow, yeah, those were some award winning pools of green infinity right there—“I walked.”

“Wait,” Stiles shook his head. “What?”

Derek sighed. “The truck is NPS, and I only use it for official park business. Nursing your wounds, bring you that binder—that is not in the service of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, “But this is a missing persons case!”

“Actually,” Derek interjected. “You are filling out the forms for that. There isn’t a case on record yet.”

“So you walked? All the way from Kennecott?”

“No,” Derek replied. “From McCarthy.”

“Wow,” Stiles sighed.

He let Derek go to town on his feet while he casually flipped through the binder. And crap, Ranger Camwell? Yeah, he had some microscopic chicken scratch for handwriting that was going to be a pain in the ass to decipher. No wonder Derek didn’t want to deal with the case. The more Stiles tried to read the notes, the more he started to doubt they were even in English. He threw the binder aside and watched Derek tear a piece of tape with his teeth, his big, shiny white teeth—and nope, Stiles fixed his stare on his jacket and remembered his souvenirs from the day.

“Hey,” he smiled, “You won’t believe some of the stuff I found up at the mine.”

Derek rolled his eyes, “Let me guess. Copper?”

Stiles laughed and asked Derek to hand him his jacket. He pulled out the rocks and held them up into the light. “Yeah. Copper. These are some pretty cool rocks.”

“Stiles.”

He darted his eyes from the rock to Derek and back to the rock. “What?”

“You aren’t supposed to take anything from the park.”

“It’s a rock.”

“Stiles.”

“What?”

Derek clenched his jaw and replied through his teeth, “You stole park property.”

“Temporarily misappropriated,” Stiles leered.

“Stiles,” Derek warned and held out his hand.

“Alright,” he caved. “Fine.” Stiles gave the rocks to Derek, who pocketed them quickly and then went back to work on Stiles’ foot like he hadn’t just mugged him. “Like you’re going to hike back up there and put them back? I’d like to see you put those flowers back.”

“Stiles,” Derek’s voice held a warning tone.

“Ugh, okay, but you know, I picked them, and they’re not rocks, you can’t just put them back.” He pulled out his wallet and opened it, pretty upset that Derek was going to make him fork over a flower because of park regulations.

Just as fast as he’d pulled out the first one, and Derek’s hand had been out, waiting for Stiles to place it there, Stiles was on his back and under Derek before he could take a breath. And all his breath had been knocked out of him. Derek had slapped the flower away and basically—yeah, pretty much in no uncertain terms—mounted Stiles, and was now glowering down at him.

“Where—did—you—get—that?” he gritted. Stiles could see Derek’s pulse racing in his neck and he seriously couldn’t believe his first thought was to lift his head up and—he licked his lips and started struggling under Derek’s weight. Under normal circumstances, he should’ve been able to at least move the man, but his hips and legs were sore from climbing that freaking mountain all day.

“I told you,” he gasped when he finally got his chest free. “Up at the mine.”

Derek tilted his head to the side and lowered it to Stiles chest. A few seconds passed and he propped himself up on his elbows and stared.

“W-what?” Stiles stammered. Maybe Derek was expecting an apology? What the hell even, Stiles thought, Ranger Camwell was the one obsessed with plants.

Derek swallowed and dropped his gaze down Stiles’ face, down his neck and then to where their abdomen’s were touching. The sight of that seemed to shake him from whatever the hell had just overcome him and he pushed himself up and off of Stiles.

He stood up and grabbed the kit, slammed it closed, and walked to the door.

“You know,” Stiles gulped. “You rangers should really emphasize the leave no trace, take nothing policy in your hike pep talks. I didn’t really know—” but the door slamming cut him off.

“Hoooolyy fuck,” Stiles quaked, his voice faltering. Did that just happen? What was that even? One minute the guy was almost, maybe being a decent gentleman and the next he’d assaulted Stiles over a three inch purple flower.

Stiles sat in shock for a minute or two before he got up—slowly, his muscles were sore—and looked around for his discarded wallet. It had been slapped away during the—Stiles shuddered—physical rule enforcement. He kneeled down and reached under the futon, feeling around for it. When he pulled it out, he let out a small gasp when his finger crushed the flower.

It wasn’t soft and purple anymore. It had shriveled up and turned black.

“What the hell,” Stiles whispered. “What in holy hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are curious, everything described in the archive room is real. Even the carving.


	5. Didn't I, Didn't I, Didn't I See Ya Cryin'?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between his father's documentation on the mating habits of wolves, to drinking whiskey at open mic night, and being called to the airport for unknown reasons by Neil -- Stiles isn't sure this is real life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, really unbeta'd. 
> 
> Tikaani is Ahtna Athabaskan (the natives from that area of Alaska) for Wolf, and Nuuni is porcupine.

It wasn’t ten minutes after his shower that Stiles felt the need to just pass out and let himself fall into a coma. He nestled into the dip of the futon and tried to shake the feeling of someone else on top of him, of pressure, and panting, and—he stopped and rolled over, pulling the blanket over his head and exhaled sporadically. As he twiddled his bandaged toes together, Stiles wondered if something had been wrong with Derek, if he’d freaked out over a miscommunication, or if somehow he thought Stiles had gifted him flowers and suddenly that made rushing to second base an unavoidable result.  His last thoughts were of big gestures, and the guarded hearts of green eyed rangers that never smiled.

 

_He felt the rush of blood to his head and couldn’t focus, hearing screams from far away that echoed around him. He couldn’t place where they had come from. The woods were dark and dense, and he couldn’t make out anything other than their shadows. He ran around, listening, looking, trying to find that thing he had lost, but he couldn’t bring himself to shout. It was agonizing. Fear encroached upon him, until he just felt like lying down on the damp ground and giving up. “Don’t give up, Stiles,” someone said. But he couldn’t see them. He was in too much pain._

He woke to the sound of rain on the roof and a chill dancing its way up his spine. It was just as cold as the morning before, only wet and dark, and this time there would be no Pop Tarts on fire—he ate them untoasted. And so what if he stayed in his pajamas until one in the afternoon, sipping coffee and curled up on the futon? His muscles were sore. His feet were battered. He was reading about wolves. _Freaking wolves_. And their packs, what they did, how they interacted, how they survived. And when that got a little too _White Fang_ for him, Stiles started attempting to transcribe Ranger Camwell’s notes.

According to Harlem Reid, a neighbor—and really, a neighbor? Where?—of the missing, John had set out to check the conditions of his observation huts, packed enough supplies for a week, and gone when he felt he could make it through the April snow. What Stiles couldn’t quite seem to comprehend was how no one, not Neil, not this Harlem, or half a dozen other people in the town, seemed to know where his dad was going. No one knew where he did his observations. And so Stiles sat down on the floor of the cabin, maps sprawled out in front of him, and tried to make sense of his father’s notations. He’d managed to get a few GPS points figured out and marked them accordingly, and also used some of Camwell’s notes to mark areas of interest. Stiles was able to finish more than half the forms, and was tempted to answer “Reason for entering park:” with “Hunting for evidence of a lost alien civilization”. He wasn’t saying it was aliens but…

Once his eyes got tired of squinting at that awkward blue ink of Camwell’s, Stiles went back to sifting through his father’s observation notes for clues. Just when he was about to give up after spending ten minutes reading about wolves and their trails, he came across a section labeled “Mating Season”, which, in the notes was prefaced with

 _Flirtations,_ week _of February 5 - Tikaani Alpha overly physical, shows signs of pursuit toward Tikaani Alpha Fem. in unwanted sniffing and harassing._ Concl _: breeding season may be early this year, re: prior years heat dates to compare._

And wow, that was funny, wolves seemed to behave just like humans. Stiles chuckled and then winced when his stomach rumbled, clearly telling him that sour cream and onion Pringles were not going to cut it for sustenance. So he bundled up, headed out to the side of the house in the—holy balls, 44 degree rain—and grabbed a reindeer steak. After spending some more quality time getting to know the burn patterns of the outdoor grill, Stiles parked himself at the desk with the steak and a side of green beans, and kept reading.

He’d been skimming over the weeks leading up to April, while not quite enjoying his Rudolph-well-done, when an unfamiliar phrase caught his attention and drew him back up the page. “Rogue Beta” was underlined and he reread its context—

 _Night of 3/14, Tikaani Beta gets in_ skirmish _with_ unidentified _wolf, pack origin unknown. Tikaani Alpha_ unphased _._ Morning _of 3/15, no sign of Rogue Beta, but Tik. Beta on edge and clings to Tik. Alpha. Males follow_ trail _out toward_ Nuuni _Pass in search of_ hare _._

Stiles slammed his hand on the desk and rattled his empty plate.

“Oh yeah!” He air fisted, looked around and realizing he was completely alone in his triumph. He got a name, a location, somewhere to place his dad on a map, and maybe find an observation hut. Maybe this would yield something conclusive enough to get the ball rolling on the whole declaring—oh, yeah, wait, this was his dad, his more than likely mortally incapacitated dad, who, despite having up and left him with a savings account and a willing caretaker, was still his father. And yeah, Stiles didn’t owe the man anything. In fact, Stiles owed it to himself to declare the guy dead and be done with him. He shuffled around and flung himself back on the floor, unable to resist looking on the map and finding the exact location.

Twenty minutes later, he shoved himself up on his elbows and let out a long sigh. There was no Nuuni Pass on the map.

“Great,” he muttered.

 

 

Stiles was sitting in the cab of the Chevy, parked down the street from the Saloon, wondering if he really had an open mic night in him. For all his partying and college days, for all the karaoke and downright ridiculous things he had done on stage—like the three month period he thought he could be a comedian, which did end in a tomato being thrown at his face, but that was at an Olive Garden—Stiles didn’t quite feel up to drinking and letting loose. He didn’t really feel it was appropriate, not after spending the entire day wrapped up in his father’s missing persons case file. Or you know what? Maybe he did deserve it after all the work he had put in.

So he found himself walking into the Saloon, brighter than he’d ever seen it, and flashing a big smile at Lucy, who was already at the bar and having an in depth conversation with another woman. Stiles had to push his way past a group of guys to get over there—one of which was in fact wearing red flannel—who looked at him with questioning judgmental stares before raising their beers and talking amongst themselves.

“Stiles,” Lucy shouted. He finally got to the corner of the bar and stood between the two seated ladies. Lucy was wearing a navy blue dress and was done up in the way Stiles imagined she’d be back in civilized society, smoky make-up and curled hair, quite pretty. Her companion looked less interested in getting dolled up, was wearing jeans and a wool sweater, and looked to be sipping on a straight shot of—if Stiles were to judge—bourbon. Her eyes were narrowed as she looked him over, like his choice of clothing, or rather, choice of existence, was quite a poor one.

“You must be a local,” Stiles said as he held out his hand. “I’m Stiles Stilinski.” And before she could really protest or reply, he’d shaken her hand and waved down the bartender. “Another round of drinks for the ladies,” he ordered. “And an IPA for me if you have one on tap.” The bartender didn’t give him a smile or a second glance but went to fill the order.

“Stiles,” Lucy smiled. “This is Diana. She runs the greenhouse out back.” Stiles nodded his head in acknowledgment and continued to smile despite Diana’s frown. “If you’re thinking of staying into the winter, you two should talk about working something out.”

Diana looked from Lucy to Stiles and rolled her eyes. “I guess I can give you the same deal I gave your dad,” she caved.

“Uh, yeah,” Stiles replied. “Sounds good.” He waited for an elaboration from her on what that might entail but watched as she pounded her drink instead. He was going to ask, but then the bartender brought their drinks, and Diana grabbed hers, stood up, and excused herself to “talk to a guy about a thing”. Stiles took her seat at the bar and turned to Lucy, exasperated as he pulled his pint toward him. “So is this what Neil meant by ‘dealing with locals’?”

 “Well,” Lucy raised her brows, “I can’t speak for Neil, but yeah, it’s gonna be a tough time. And, I get the feeling a lot of them are really trying, you know, to help you. Because of your dad.”

Stiles sipped his beer and blinked. “My dad? I mean, I guess he was around long enough to be in their little club, but really? Where do they get off being so grouchy and pretentious?” He hadn’t meant for the bartender to hear him, as the man stood there waiting for payment or a card to open the tab. Stiles couldn’t tell if the guy was offended, or just impatient. “Not you,” Stiles offered as he took out his wallet and handed him his card. “You’re a great big bundle of joy.”

The bartender snorted and walked off to the computer, allowing Stiles to turn his attention back to a pensive Lucy.

“Well?” he asked. “Your theories on the population of McCarthy’s communal distaste for anything or anybody not of this land would be well received by me. Stiles wants to know! What is in the water?”

“I think it has to do with independence. And maybe they feel they earn their superiority when they stick it out for the long haul. You should really give them some credit, eight months spent under these conditions is not a walk in the park.”

Feeling the ache of his sore muscles, and the looming thought of his father’s own ‘walk in the park’, Stiles quickly replied, “Let’s talk about something else.”

And so Lucy segued into quite a few things, all at once, like her unhealthy addiction to _Hoarders,_ and the possibility of her reconnecting with her ex boyfriend back in Oregon.

“He’s an English professor,” she explained. “And sometimes I just can’t understand him. Literally. He talks about himself using literature references and, as much as I feel like an educated woman, I’m sorry, but I haven’t read every single poem by Byron. I don’t know what it means to ‘sit down by the Rivers of Babylon and cry’.”

That drew a heavy laugh from Stiles. “You know, poetry is the language of love.”

“No,” Lucy shook her head. “It’s not! Not when it’s full of references to Jesus and Greek mythology.” Stiles took another swig of beer but almost spit it out when Lucy added, “Speaking of Adonis…”

“What?” Stiles half spit. He wiped the beer from his mouth and stared wide-eyed at his grinning companion.

“What do you think about Derek?” she asked, a hint of teasing on her tongue.

“What?” Stiles exclaimed, and then a sudden understanding hit him. Had he been that obvious? Were his death glares mixed with lusty stares being mistaken for only the latter? “First of all, Derek doesn’t speak at all, unless it’s through barred teeth and meant to intimidate and dismay. And second of all…” He trailed off when the image of Derek’s face so close to his own flashed in his memory. Stiles took a quick sip of his beer—and he really felt like he needed something stronger—“Derek is not, he isn’t—okay, this conversation needs to go in another direction.”

“How are you feeling after the hike?” Lucy asked. And Stiles felt a sigh of relief escape him.

 “Good, a bit sore, but you know, I think in about two years, I’ll be able to look back on my time spent up there fondly.”

Lucy sipped her gin and tonic and nodded. “And your feet? How are the blisters?” And then there was that look again. “Did Derek—”

“Fine, absolutely fine,” Stiles interrupted. “Blisters are fine.”

Stiles shared a few awkward glances between his beer and Lucy, opening his mouth to say something else, but ultimately not trusting himself to speak.

“You okay, Stiles?”

He chuckled and shook his shoulders, “Yeah, of course. What—why wouldn’t I be?”

Lucy gulped. “Well, you just got really frazzled when I mentioned Derek. And you claim there’s nothing going on between you two.”

Stiles threw up his hands and turned around to lean against the bar. “Why don’t you ask Derek about the frazzling that he gets up to and then get back to me on—hey,” Stiles saw a guy with a guitar step up to the mic in the main room. He tapped Lucy’s arm and pointed, “Is that a local? Is open mic night gonna start?”

She turned around and explained that there was a usual lineup, and that by the fourth guy, they usually broke out into acoustic requests or karaoke.

“Wonderful,” Stiles muttered, and signaled for another drink. “Whiskey and coke.”

 

 

He knew the fifth drink was a mistake, but he didn’t want to be on stage without something to cling to.

“Come on,” Lucy whined and tugged his sleeve.

“Alright!” Stiles moaned. He grabbed the glass. “I’m coming.”

By now the Saloon was packed full, and Chad—the mid-thirties, Matt Damon look alike in a cowboy hat—had waved Lucy up to come sing.

Stiles had resigned himself to getting slightly drunk, and after his second drink had let Lucy pry into the juicy details of his love life, which to be honest, he kind of hyped up. Her big, brown expectant eyes were begging for something, anything, and Stiles felt the need to vindicate her torrid romantic assumptions about his “past lovers.” Her words, not his. So, while yes, he had been completely and utterly devoted to Lydia Martin from the third grade until well into high school, never at any time had it been “a sordid affair” plagued with “awkward teenage reactions” that resulted in self realizations. It was true—the constant rejection he received led to his curiosity toward the male gender, and his sophomore quest of finding out if he was attractive to gay guys—but none of it had really been all that exciting. 

“Her name was Erica,” he explained. “And she started out as this modest, wonderfully beautiful girl.”

Lucy was on the edge of her seat and clutching her glass like a lifeline. She questioned, “And…?”

“Well,” Stiles sighed. “She became a runaway, turned into a vixen, literally wearing leather all the time, and instead of being something from a wild fantasy, she actually was more like a really bad, biker girl nightmare.” He gulped at the memory. “She definitely broke my car when I expressed that I might be done with the relationship.”

“What prompted that change in her?”

Stiles shrugged uncomfortably, “I don’t know. A change in medication?”

Lucy blinked.

“And then came Danny.”

“Oohh,” Lucy cooed. “Tell me about Danny.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Stiles laughed. “Really, it was just awkward and experimental, and the fact that he still talks to me to this day kind of astounds me. I feel like he helped me realize who I really was, you know? It was crazy to actually have feelings reciprocated, to have day-to-day moments with someone, to kinda get used to yourself in relation to another person. And you know—” Stiles grinned, “It was nice to finally be able to get-it-on.”

“Stiles!” Lucy blushed.

“What? You wanted to know!”

“But,” she began, and then lowered her voice, “there’s been no one recently?”

And what could Stiles say? That through his college years, which consisted of more one night stands that he’d like to admit, he’d had one serious relationship, a sickening love affair that lasted seventeen months and probably took most of his sense of romance from him. He wasn’t cynical, but he definitely wasn’t naïve enough to think relationships were stable, and really? Yeah, the only person he could ever truly depend on to be there was Scott. Shit, Stiles thought. That was a whole mess he didn’t want to think about four drinks in at 11 o’clock.

“Guatemala,” Stiles answered, bringing himself back to Lucy’s shining eyes. “There was a bottle of whiskey and some tongue tango going on with an interpreter.”

Lucy giggled behind her drink. “What was his name?”

Stiles smiled. “Miguel.”

And the next thing Stiles knew, he was standing on the makeshift stage in the main room of the Saloon, smiling like an idiot and agreeing to sing with Lucy. He couldn’t quite focus on the tables of people, or the groups huddled around the bar, but it was loud and sounded like party, and at this point, he wanted to lose himself in that.

“Cheap Trick,” Chad shouted. “You know it?”

It took Stiles a few seconds to realize the question, and he nodded emphatically. “Do I know it? Of course!”

And then Chad was off, playing the familiar chords and—hey, where did they get a drummer? And then Lucy was elbowing him, singing, “I want you to want me!”

“…need you to need me,” Stiles pushed out, half laughing, half trying to catch his breath. But then they were on fire, singing it together and going back and forth. And if he kinda lost most of his drink bouncing around singing the bridge, no one seemed to notice or care—the crowd was clapping and he and Lucy were dancing, and all was right in that moment. When Chad finished up on guitar, Lucy was panting but gave one last “Ahhh!” into the mic before throwing her arms around Stiles’ neck and telling him how awesome he was.

Stiles looked from Lucy and back to the crowd, smiling as they stepped off the stage and over to the side of the room. He heard a few “Nice job, Ranger” comments, and one “Who’s the pretty boy?” So he found himself scanning the tables to find the source, but then there was that guy in the red flannel again and—yeah, right then, in that moment, he looked really good to Stiles, like a quarter on the ground, something you always hope to find but are never really looking for. Longish brown hair, and, “Oh my god,” he said under his breath, because the guy looked just like the Brawny man.

“What?” Lucy asked, one of her arms still hanging around Stiles’ neck. She tried to follow his line of vision but seemed distracted by something else. “Now that is something I never thought I would see.”

“God, it’s like a living breathing advertisement,” Stiles sighed. “The quicker picker-upper. Wait—that’s Bounty.”

Lucy dropped her arm and leaned in to whisper, “You want to pick him up?”

Stiles shook himself and stared at her. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Derek,” she murmured. “I never thought I’d see him here. He’s over in the corner playing cards.”

And maybe Stiles’ head snapped in that direction a lot quicker than he’d ever admit, but his drunken eyes weren’t even shocked to see Derek Hale sitting in a shadowed corner, huddled around a hand of cards with furrowed brows and a deep frown. He was surprised to see him in a leather jacket.  Because really? Stiles wasn’t sure how bad boy you could really be as a park ranger.

“Derek!” Lucy yelled, waving and trying to catch his attention. He finally looked up and over the others at the table long enough to glance from Lucy to Stiles and then slouch back again to focus on his cards.

“I need some air,” Stiles gulped. And he wasn’t running away—what was there to run away from? He opened the side door and stepped out onto the porch and into the cold darkness. He needed to get a grip on what he was feeling. There were a dozen or so other people out there but, as locals would be expected, they didn’t even look his way when he leaned against the railing. His pulse was racing, and he wasn’t sure if it was just the adrenaline from singing and dancing, or the growing hint of arousal from the Brawny man, or the clenched up feeling in his chest when his eyes met familiar green.

“Boy the quickest way to get hypothermia is when you think you aren’t even cold,” Neil rattled. Stiles felt a pat on his back and saw the older man lean over the rail next to him.

Stiles grinned. “Neil, I’ve got those wool long johns on. I think I’m okay for the time being.”

And they stood there in a happy sort of silence for a minute or two, and Stiles was able to calm himself down, literally and figuratively, before Neil sighed and asked how the investigation was going. Stiles related his findings, or at least the relevant ones, regarding the observation huts and the time periods and hey—“There was something I couldn’t find on the map. Oh my god, what was it? A name of an area, maybe.”

“Figure it out and let me know,” Neil offered. He stared at Stiles like he couldn’t find exactly what he wanted to say, but finally let out, “I want to help in any way I can.” And then he turned back to the dark street, sipping on his drink and clenching his jaw. That was the first time Stiles realized Neil was a friend of his father’s. That people, other than Stiles, actually knew the guy, and more than that, they cared about him. “Your dad,” Neil said in a low voice, as if he was reading Stiles’ mind—“he was a good man. Didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

And Stiles didn’t know what to think of that. Even his whisky altered brain could comprehend that the man who was his father had existed in a world without Stiles for a long time—and Stiles knew, intrinsically, in the farthest part of his heart, that what Neil had said was true. Because even someone who leaves his son the way John Stilinski left Stiles doesn’t deserve to die alone in the cold. But then—

“Wait, what do you mean? What do you think happened to him?”

Neil exhaled and started shaking his head. “I reckon it was something he just wasn’t prepared for.” He pat Stiles on the arm and walked back into the Saloon.

Stiles stayed out there for another twenty minutes, obviously not missed, and admittedly too torn up to go back to the party. The whole thing—McCarthy and his dad—was more than he had bargained for, and it felt like he was confronting the man face to face instead of trying to metaphorically bury him—er, officially declare him dead. And no matter how drunk he got, how many songs he sang, how many guys he checked out and maybe tried to lose himself in—nothing would change the fact that he was completely and utterly alone.

And worse, he was alone in Alaska.

 

He woke up the next morning with a bad headache, but no other signs of a hangover. Still, as he sprang up from the futon, Stiles moaned in agony—his leg muscles were even more sore than the day before. It looked like clear skies at least, and maybe, Stiles thought, he’d brave a trip up to the mill town and see how Lucy was doing, and what she could make of his findings the day before.

“Aha!” Stiles shouted, and then cringed when his headache seemed to rattle within his forehead. But he got up anyway and went out to the porch, remembering vividly that Neil said he would help him find the mysterious place his dad had mentioned.

Turning on the radio, Stiles played around with it before doing the call—(“Breaker, breaker, oh-one, this is Baby Bear calling Papa Bear, do you read?”)—and asking for Neil to copy. After a minute, he was about to repeat the thing, but Neil’s voice was rattling over the speaker, “Damnit, Stiles, get your ass down to the landing strip.”

“What?” Stiles asked.

It was another thirty seconds before Neil fired back, “Get down to the runway.”

 

Twenty minutes later, Stiles pulled into the fenced area and parking next to a row of trucks, wondering what in the hell Neil meant to do dragging him out to the airport at nine in the morning. He saw Neil’s truck by one of the plane hangars and headed that way, mentally preparing himself for any number of high risk scenarios, one of them being a bush plane landing out on a glacier field. But when he rounded the corner to the front of the structure, nothing could have prepared Stiles for what he saw.

“SCOTT?” he shrieked.

His friend stood leaning against the door of the plane hangar, animatedly talking to Neil, a duffle at his feet and a huge smile on his face.

“Stiles!” Scott called. His friend closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around Stiles in a big hug.

“Scott, what are you doing here?” Stiles blurted and pulled away. He watched his friend’s smile falter and added, “Not that I’m—I mean, wow, Scott, you’re here. You are here. You came all the way up here…you do know there is no surfing? Right? I mean this part of the state is obviously landlocked but even then—”

“Stiles,” Scott interrupted. “I felt really terrible about our conversation.”

Stiles felt his own guilt creeping into his consciousness, and said, “About that…I’m sorry. I had no right to go off on you.”

“No!” his friend exclaimed. “You had every right to be angry. You were right, Stiles. I wasn’t really there for you. If it was me, I just know I wouldn’t want to be going through this by myself.”

And there it was—in one simple explanation—the one thing that had been ebbing away at Stiles. Being alone. There—right in that statement, that was the reason why he and Scott were best friends. Stiles smiled and patted Scott’s back. “So you thought spending your entire life’s savings to get up here was a good plan?”

“Actually,” Scott smiled, “I ended up saving like two grand by hopping a ride with the Post Office delivery plane.” Which, Neil explained, was pretty lucky considering there was no rhyme or reason or schedule to the mail deliveries: it came when it came. It turned out Scott had been on quite a journey, though, getting stuck in San Francisco due to bad weather, earning an upgrade to business class on his flight to Anchorage, and then having to wait an extra five hours for his bag to arrive. “But it all worked out,” he said with a notorious grin plastered across his face. Stiles couldn’t help but smile too. He almost couldn’t believe that Scott was there. Almost.

The two of them and Neil stood talking about the various different flights coming into McCarthy, and possibly going up on a scenic flight that afternoon, when “quite a fancy girl”—Neil’s words—flew over the runway and came back in for a landing. Stiles asked Neil who would be flying such a nice plane into McCarthy, but the mountain man had no ideas. They all just stood and watched at the plane eventually taxied to a stop.

Then a red Yukon sped across the runway and parked next to the plane, and Stiles watched in an almost slow motion horror as Gerard Argent stepped out of the rig and sent a half wave his way. The Argents. Allison. Gerard had said they were arriving in a few days.

Stiles slapped Scott’s arm and hissed, “You got my message right?”

"Message?” Scott questioned. “What message?”

“Obviously not,” Stiles grumbled. He turned to his friend and laid his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Okay, so, I know who is on that plane, and let me tell you, Scott, you’re gonna need to prepare yourself for who you’re about to see. It’s—I mean, you’re gonna be taken right back to high school and we really just need to keep your head in the now.” And Stiles watched as Scott’s eyes grew wider, continuing, “Just stay calm, don’t freak out—”

“Jackson?” Scott questioned.

“—she probably doesn’t remember you but we just have to stay—” Stiles stopped and whipped his head around, eyeing a familiar man shaking hands with Gerard Argent. “Jackson Whittemore.” Stiles repeated, “Jackson freaking Whittemore? Really? What—have there been a series of dream vacation giveaways in Beacon Hills to scenic, historic McCarthy? What is this even?”

But Scott had started walking away from the hangar, like a moth to the light, and Stiles didn’t have to glance from the men on the ground to the door of the plane to know that Allison had stepped out onto the stairs. He turned to Neil, who surprisingly was not looking on the scene with amusement.

“Neil,” Stiles entreated, “is this real life?”

The man raised a brow and shook his head. “Boy, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that.” 


	6. Baby, It's Cold Outside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long hiatus :D thanks to thecruixe for being an awesome beta :D

Stiles was screwed. Not only had he gotten lost in the great Alaskan wilderness during a snowstorm, but he was pretty sure he had just let his best friend get eaten by a bear. Now he was never going to close the case on his dad’s death, because he was pretty sure he had just opened the case on his own. He blamed Derek Hale. Because every single problem Stiles faced went back to that sour-faced ranger.                  

“I swear to god, if I get out of this,” he muttered to himself. He crossed his arms and kept walking through the darkness, squinting, because it wasn’t really dark—the snow was reflecting quite a bit of light. But the light didn’t matter anyway since he had no idea where he was going. He’d spent ten minutes trying to retrace his steps, and another ten minutes trying to find north. Then he spent a good five to seven minutes trying to decide if he should pee or hold it in to retain the body warmth. After emptying his bladder and cursing the shivers up his spine that followed, Stiles got back to a familiar area of the forest. But as it turned out, it was only familiar from about twenty minutes before. He’d simply gone in one giant circle.

And wasn’t that what this whole situation was? Every time he thought he was getting somewhere, something else would just come along and mess up his progress. Like the Argents. Like he really needed them coming onto his radar when he was dealing with moody park rangers and the answer to his father’s death. Oh, and Jackson? Their little lap dog? He was the cherry on top. The ex-lacrosse captain’s voice still rang in Stiles’ ears from that morning.

* * *

 

“Well if it isn’t McCall and Balinsky, the greatest bench warmers to never be known at Beacon Hills High.”

Stiles blinked at Jackson Whittemore before looking back to an unfazed Scott, who was still staring at Allison like she had just opened the Ark of the Covenant. There was no hope on that front—yet again—as there was no overwhelming flair of recognition on her part. Allison was just as gorgeous as Stiles remembered, only she looked a little older and bit more tired, distracted. Jackson still looked like an asshole.

“It’s great to see you too, Jackson,” Stiles muttered. He shared a smile and a nod with Allison, while Scott remained silent and Allison-struck in his own little world. If Stiles didn’t know better, he’d predict the appearance of Scott’s inhaler in less than five minutes. They all remained silent and breathed normally while they watched the luggage being removed from the plane.

Gerard stepped forward, leaving his hushed conversation with Chris Argent, and barked, “Jackson! Allison! It would seem the Fates have made it so that you and your old high school friends are reunited. And, might I add, in one of the most picturesque locations. Having the chance to talk to young Mr. Stilinski a few days ago, I took the liberty of inviting him to our little gathering this evening. That invitation is, of course, extended to your friend as well.”

Scott broke his fixed gaze from Allison and smiled at the elder Argent. “Thank you, sir.”

They watched as the Argents, Jackson, and two other men loaded up into the Yukon.

“I can’t believe it’s Allison,” Scott whispered to Stiles.

They watched as the caravan sped off the runway.

“Neil,” Stiles continued to stare into the distance.

“Stiles.”

“Tell me you know something about why the Argents are up here.”

The mountain man sighed and threw his hand on Stiles’ back. “I know something about why the Argents are up here,” he repeated. “Follow me.”

It turns out Neil practically had an entire office in the back of his truck. A few thermoses of hot coffee, a rolled out map, and a berry muffin later, Stiles and Scott found themselves listening to the mountain man bark orders over the radio. Something about a search and rescue forming up outside town.

“What’s that all about?” Stiles inquired.

“Don’t worry about it,” Neil fumed. “Just another late season interloper getting lost in the forest.” Stiles gulped. The radio went off again with chatter and Neil turned his back on them to answer it.

Scott turned to Stiles and asked, “What’s this about, Stiles?”

“Guns, Scott,” he explained. “The Argents sell guns globally, that’s no secret.”

“Oh.” Scott looked confused. “So why do we need to talk about it?”

Stiles bit his lip and shook his head. “I don’t know! There must be something related to their gun business and McCarthy. And Beacon Hills. All I know is that it isn’t _the Fates_ , or coincidence, or God himself that brought us all up here.”

“So you think it has to do with the guns?”

“No Scott,” Stiles groaned. He watched as Neil ducked into the cab of his truck to grab something. “I don’t think this has anything to do with guns. I think we’re missing something. Something big. There’s no way my dad, the Argents, and even Der—”

“Boys!” Neil shouted. Stiles and Scott shared a glance before standing up straighter and closing their mouths. Stiles felt a nervous energy creep through him as Neil poured some coffee from a thermos. He licked his lips.

“Neil, you gotta tell me what’s going on here. What are the Argents doing and please, _please_ , tell me it has nothing to do with why my dad was up here, let alone his disappearance.”

Neil finished sipping his coffee before he leaned on the truck and gave Stiles a fixed look. “Stiles, I can’t give you anything substantial. I will tell you what I know which is common fact around here. Anybody would tell you the same.”

“If I could get them to talk to me.” Stiles grumbled. He saw Neil roll his eyes and said, “Continue, please.”

Neil explained that the Argents owned a considerable amount of land outside McCarthy, that their family had been around just as long as his, if not longer. They had never attracted too much attention until the 1970s when people began to notice their bizarre flight schedules.

“They’d fly things in at all hours of the night, undisclosed cargo and whatnot, and the whispering consensus around here was that they were selling guns to the Soviets.” Scott and Stiles exchanged glances and Stiles began to think that this was way above his head. “And to this day, we all think they still sell to the highest bidder. Regardless of nation or ideology. They have storage facilities somewhere in these mountains.”

“And what about Jackson?” Scott asked.

 “Screw Jackson,” Stiles scoffed. “Is my dad connected to any of this?”

Neil sighed. “When John first arrived, speculation was that he came to investigate them. Former sheriff and what not. And during his first few weeks here, he asked a lot of questions about the Argents, seemed pretty familiar with them too. But his interest dwindled, and he started doing his wolf stuff.”

“Wolf stuff?” Scott looked confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Stiles said.

“I understand that you know them too, seems it’s all connected to that town you come from in the hills—”

“Beacon Hills,” Scott interjected.

Neil nodded, “I think it would be best for you if you stayed away from the Argents.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Stiles laughed. At least not for him. Scott on the other hand… Stiles looked over the map in front of them. “Could you show me where their property is?”

And as Neil pointed to the eastern outlying areas of McCarthy, Stiles was reminded of his promising find from the day before.

“Neil, can you tell me where Nuuni Pass is?”

The older man froze.

Stiles felt the need to elaborate. “It’s a place I found in my father’s notes. I think he used to go there, or near there. And he might’ve been in that area when he—well anyway, I looked for it and couldn’t find it on any of his maps.”

“No, you wouldn’t find it on a map,” Neil answered. “It’s an old native name.” He seemed to shake himself from the shock of Stiles request and set his attention back on the map. He pointed to an area east of McCarthy. “Nuuni Pass is a little south of University Peak. That’s roughly fifty miles southeast of here.”

Stiles smiled, “Fifty miles isn’t so far.”

“No, on the main road, on a good day, you could get two thirds of the distance in a few hours by vehicle. It’s the hike south to the Pass that’s the trouble. The pass is directly between two glaciers.”

“Could you take us there? Or map it out for us? I have this feeling about the place,” Stiles shared. “I think it had some significance for my dad and that might have been where he was going when he’d—disappeared.”

Neil remained quiet. Stiles and Scott shared a few glances and Stiles knew he had more than an afternoon’s worth of explaining to do to get Scott up to speed.

“Well, I might be able to land a rig down Hawkins Glacier. And that would be within a few miles of where you’d want to look.”

 

* * *

 

The drive back to the Stilinski cabin consisted of Scott asking questions and Stiles attempting to answer them before his best friend would react to something else. It went from wolves, to journal articles, and finally, Allison Argent.

“Do you think we could stay on subject?” Stiles groaned.

Scott nodded, “Yeah, man I’m sorry. It’s just—I thought I’d never see her again.” They shared a look and Stiles knew it was too late. Scott had already fallen back into the same lovelorn romance from high school that had kept them awake and plotting after every nine hour Call of Duty session. And being Scott’s faithful wingman meant seeing him through what would likely be another episode of heartache and public humiliation. To which Stiles blinked, “Please, oh god, tell me you brought your inhaler?”

“Dude, of course!” They pulled up to the cabin and unloaded. “I think I might need my jacket back,” Scott laughed. “It’s a lot colder than I was expecting.”

“Well, step right in to Stilinski and Son, outfitters and anthropologists, here to take care of all your foul weather and cultural behavioral needs.” Stiles grinned and slapped Scott on the back. “No really,” he said, “Neil loaded me up with half of the North Face men’s collection, so…”   Scott had stopped and was staring at the cabin. “What?” Stiles smiled faded. “What is it?”

“No, it’s—it’s just,” Scott stammered. He turned to Stiles but couldn’t meet his eyes.

“What?”

“Stiles, I can’t believe your dad would leave you for _this_.”

Scott finally met his eyes, and Stiles let his mouth fall open as the words he’d been trying to avoid now rang through his ears. He pursed his lips and shook his head, “You and me both, Scotty boy.” He motioned for Scott to climb the steps. “You and me both,” Stiles whispered.

* * *

  
  
After spending the rest of the morning educating Scott with all the knowledge on the park, the locals, and the bear problem, Stiles decided to drag his best friend into town to get some lunch. He assured Scott that there would be plenty of time to try a reindeer steak and that it isn’t something one should just rush into. _One does not simply…_ And so they found themselves in the Saloon at a quarter past one, laughing over hamburgers and ignoring the scowling couple two tables over. After lunch, they took a walk around town, which was only slightly awkward when Stiles attempted to wave and greet every local they passed.

  
Walking by Jake Howard’s place, Stiles saw Neil’s truck and got an idea.

An hour and a half later, they were in the air with Neil, on their way to scout the area and map out potential landings on the glacier.

“So how does this work?” Stiles asked.

Neil kept his gaze on the horizon and answered, “I’ll check for any hazards, making sure the terrain is stable, and analyze the temperature out there.” He glanced back at Stiles, who had taken the backseat so Scott could enjoy the amazing views. “Don Welsh told me we might expect a storm in the next day or two, in which case, we’ll have to come scout again when it’s cleared.”

Stiles frowned. “And generally how long does it take for a storm to clear?”

“Hmm,” Neil steered the plane around and pointed to a mountain nearby. “That’s University Peak.”

“It’s huge,” Scott

“Back to the storm thing,” Stiles chided.

Neil rolled his eyes. “Two years ago, the first storm of Fall lasted a little over two weeks. Last year it came and went in a day and left no trace of snow.” He pressed the wheel in his hands and pointed to the landscape below. “There it is. Hawkins Glacier. Then there’s Barnard, and on the far side, that monstrosity you see is the Chitina Glacier, rounding out the southern most part. Somewhere between those three, at my eleven o’clock, is Nuuni Pass.”

Stiles shook his head and exclaimed, “Well, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” To which both Neil and Scott laughed. Neil took them in closer, past the Hawkins Glacier, over a ridge, and quite a ways over some trees.

“There,” he pointed. Stiles followed his finger. Off in the distance, a rocky V was visible, and on the other side of it, a flat canyon.

“So, when the conditions are right, we’ll be able to take her down and check it out.”

“And, uh, how much longer is the window for good conditions? Isn’t winter coming?” Scott asked.

Stiles turned, open-mouthed, and leaned forward awaiting Neil’s response.

He just sat and stared out over the dashboard.

“So, what you aren’t saying,” Stiles began, “is that this could very well be the last time conditions are safe enough for a landing? What about hiking down from the main road?”

“Boy, if you’d come up here three months ago—”

“I didn’t know three months ago!” his voice faltered. He let his shoulders fall back into the chair and buried his head in hands. This was it. He knew this was the key, at the very least, the beginning, and it was about to be buried under unthinkable amounts of snow. Or maybe it wasn’t. But it still—

“Take us down,” Scott ordered. Stiles perked up in time to see the look of surprise on Neil’s face. Before the mountain man had time to reply, Scott continued,

“Give us an hour down there, or even twenty minutes. This could be our last chance to look before next summer.”

Neil seemed to take Scott’s plea into consideration immediately. To Stiles, it looked as if he started to deny the request, but stopped himself. The plane began to turn around and head back for the glacier. Stiles met Scott’s eyes and smiled.

“John was my friend,” Neil offered. “You might not find what you’re looking for seven months from now.”

Stiles pat him on the back and whispered, “Yes!”

Landing on a glacier found its way onto the Top Five Most Terrifying Things Stiles Has Ever Done mere seconds after doing it—a list which included surfing in Australia in shark infested waters—no thanks to Scott. Neil gave them a ten minute glacier safety lesson that convinced Stiles he was sure to fall into a crevasse and slowly freeze to death, and then proceeded to lead them down to actual solid ground. From there, he gave them an hour to walk around with the promise they wouldn’t climb up on down onto anything. They had a first aid kit and a satellite phone just in case.

“Reconnaissance only, my friend,” Stiles accepted. He met Scott’s eyes. “My specialty.”

Stiles felt like they were going to find something—that they had to find something. There was no trail to follow, no way for them to even remotely piece together what happened to his father—unless they found the one thing they were missing. And Stiles felt—no—he knew it was out there near Nuuni Pass.

After twenty minutes of walking, first through brush and then trees, Stiles began to feel his sore muscles from the Bonanza mine hike. “Look, Scott,” he started, with the full intention of relating that they needed to start heading back. But when he turned to his right, Scott wasn’t there. “Dude,” he breathed. He swung around to see if there was any sign of Scott.

“Scott?” he shouted. Stiles waited a few seconds before shouting again.

Silence.

“Stiles!”

He jumped a few feet and turned around.

Nothing.

“Stiles, do you copy?”

Stiles sighed and reached into the backpack for the sat phone.

“Yeah,” he pressed, “I’m here, Papa Bear. We’re about to head back.”

“—I have to run up to the other side of Russell Glacier. Ranger Hale radioed in that they’re hiring me out.”

Stiles groaned, “What for?”

“They found a body up at the Skolai Creek Woods. It’ll take me less than an hour and a half. You two finish up and then come back up here and wait. Do not, I say, do not try to get back up the glacier until I land to come get you. Neil out.”

He panicked, “Wait, Neil!” he pressed the line, but the call was dead. “Damnit!” His mind was racing with possibilities. A dead body? Could it possibly be…? But wouldn’t they know? Wouldn’t Neil have indicated something? And why was he internalizing these questions? Stiles looked around and yelled, “Scott!”

This time, he heard the crunch of ground behind him and turned in time to see Scott emerge from behind a tree.

“Dude! Where the hell did you go?”

“Relax,” Scott threw up his hands. “I had to pee.”

“He had to pee,” Stiles muttered. “Look—”

Scott threw up his hand and nodded, “I think I found one of those huts you were talking about.”

Stiles stilled.

His best friend smiled. “But you’ll have to tell Neil, because I don’t think we’ll have enough time to check it out.”

“No, it’s fine. We got extra time. Neil has to go help the park service somewhere for a few hours.”

Scott’s brows furrowed, “How come?”

“They found a body in the woods,” Stiles explained.

“A dead body?”

“No, a body of water,” Stiles blinked, “Yes, dumb ass, a dead body.”

“Well, do they—” Scott stopped.

Stiles knew what he’d meant to ask. “That’s all I know. So let’s go check this out. We have two hours.”

So, while not quite discussing the possibility that Stiles’ father might be a rotting heap on the other side of the park, they ventured toward the possible observation hut. Scott led Stiles through a more heavily forested area that later opened to a clearing roughly the size of a football field.  

“It’s on the other side,” Scott pointed. “I saw the—look come over here,” he motioned. Stiles moved to where Scott had been standing and gazed across the grassy clearing. His eyes fell on a shadowy area and some fallen trees. And then he saw it—a…window? He couldn’t believe it. They’d found it. It had been that easy.

Stiles ran out into the clearing. Looking back on it, he probably should have looked both ways before crossing.

* * *

 

 

“Well, this place is pretty legit,” Stiles breathed. He steadied himself as he knelt on the cold, dirt floor of the hut.

Scott was still using his inhaler. And trying to talk between breaths, “I thought—” breath, “—you knew—” breath, “—what to do—”

“When bears strike?” Stiles interjected. He shook his head, “You know Scott, this is only my third bear encounter in a week’s time, and I hadn’t read up on mama bears and their cubs. But from what I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel, heard through the back channels, and been told by Neil, I think we’re lucky to have made it out of that with all of our limbs.”

“You think this is funny?” Scott screamed.

“You know what—” Stiles began and then lowered his voice. “Keep your voice down. She could still be out there.” He shivered. “Lurking.”

With that comment and a glare from Scott, Stiles bundled up his jacket and took a look around. The hut was set between four trees, and recessed about four feet into the ground. It had taken them less than ten seconds to find the entrance, something similar to a cellar door. Grids of pvc pipe held up the roof, which seemed to be made from tarp and then organic material, because from the outside, it looks like the forest floor. The entire space was much bigger than he’d expected, probably ten by fifteen feet. The only light shone in through the three windows on each wall of the hut. Still, it wasn’t much light.

“Over here,” Scott whispered, and Stiles turned back toward the door. Scott had opened a large plastic crate, and was pointing to two more in the corner. Stiles scooted over that way just as Scott pulled out a binder and started leafing through it. “What the—”

“What?” Stiles asked. “What is it?”

“Flowers.” Scott turned the binder around and handed it to Stiles. Even in the dim light, Stiles recognized the shape of the flower and its vibrant color.

“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “But not so many different variations.” Each page had six flowers pressed into it, complete with a description of where it was found, latitude and longitude, and its latin name, Aconitum, followed by its variation. There were half a dozen pages of flowers, and then half a dozen more of notes in John’s handwriting.

“Why does your dad have a binder full of it?”

Stiles shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“Well, what is it?” Scott inquired.

“I don’t know,” Stiles repeated. His mind quickly went back to two days before, to Derek Hale freaking out over a few picked flowers. He remembered the shriveled black petals, and the look on Derek’s face after he’d regained control over himself. While Stiles sat turning that over and trying not relive more of that scene than he felt was publicly appropriate, Scott had dug further into the case and pulled out a stack of journals. He nudged Stiles and set the journals down beside him before opening the next crate.

“Canned goods and bottled water,” Scott sighed. “At least we’ll be okay if we get stuck here.”

Stiles sighed, “We’re not gonna get stuck here.” He picked up the binder and pointed to the journals. “Grab that stuff. We’ll head back to the glacier and wait for Neil.”

“Stiles, do you think that bear is gone?”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “I don’t know. Look out the windows.”

“And?”

He threw up his hand, “And observe! I don’t know!”

Scott scooted over to the window opposite the door and peered out the opening. “Uh, Stiles?”

“What?” he spat. He put down the flower-pedia and joined Scott at the window. “Please don’t tell me that Mrs. Berenstain has made camp for the—”

“It’s snowing,” Scott stated. Stiles’ mouth dropped. Scott sighed, “How…did we miss this?”           

Stiles reached into his pack and grabbed the satellite phone.

“What are you doing?” Scott asked.

“I’m calling Neil.”

“You think we should head back up to the glacier before it gets bad?”

Stiles shook his head and quivered, “I’m not sure Neil’s gonna be able to land on the glacier if this gets worse. That’s why I’m going to call him and figure this out.”

After ten minutes of sending out a call with no response, Stiles shoved the phone back in the first aid kit and collapsed in a heap against the wall. He turned to Scott, who had started pouting around the third unanswered call. “Don’t,” Stiles warned. “Don’t even say Allison to me.”

“We’re going to miss the dinner party,” Scott mourned.

“You had to go there,” Stiles sighed. “You know, Scott, just once I would like something to be about me, or about what’s actually going on, or how we came out here to find something and we found jack shit! Or about how we might not even make it back to McCarthy at this rate!”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Stiles questioning his gut instincts and promising himself that they’d get the hell out of Alaska the minute they got airlifted out of wherever the hell they were. He didn’t deserve this, not after everything else he’d been through. He’d lost his mom, and then his dad, and he wasn’t going to lose himself and his best friend in a meaningless search for answers—answers he was beginning to think didn’t even exist. What had he been expecting to find in the observation hut? A last will and testament?

“Stiles!”

“What?”

Scott shoved one of the journals under his nose. It smelled like leaves and smoke. “This one was started before he left. The first entry is dated the week after…” Scott gulped. “The week after your mom died.”

Stiles took the book and leafed through page after page, touching the lines of writing like he could feel John Stilinski through them. Scott held up his cell phone for light, and Stiles turned back to the first entry. He began reading it aloud, “ _I can’t imagine keeping a diary, of writing down what happens to me, and my thoughts, like they are something to be cherished or remembered. I couldn’t imagine a world without her,_ ” Stiles’ voice faltered. He gulped and then continued, “ _But that exists. There’s not much I care to think about or remember now, except for Stiles. He brought me dinner last night. Baby carrots and ranch, and a PB & J with the crusts cut off. She might be dead and gone, but I see her in him. Every day, his smile, his frown, the way he lets his fingers dance on the banister when he slowly climbs down the stairs. He sits there and waits for me. He worries about me. Our roles should be reversed. I don’t deserve him.”_

He stopped and stared at the page, the writing went on but it had blurred together. Scott turned and sat down next to him, patting his leg, and sighing.

Stiles heard static, and a “—do you read?” come through the sat phone in the pack.

His head perked up and he and Scott locked eyes and smiled. “Yesss!” Stiles cawed. He reached in and grabbed the phone, pulled it to his ear and replied, “Papa Bear, this is Baby Bear, loud and proud, and, phew, excited to hear your voice.”

“Stiles!” That was not Neil. That was closer to someone—“This is Ranger Hale. Are you waiting at the glacier?”

“No?” Stiles questioned. “We found one of my father’s observation sites and have taken shelter here.”

“Good,” Hale replied. “You’re out of the storm. I’m with Neil. He’s attempting to land the plane a little more south than where he dropped you off. Can you come meet—” the call cut out “—edge of the glacier—” Silence.

Scott grabbed Stiles’ arm. “Did they crash?”

“No!” Stiles shrieked. “No…it must just be static from the storm. It sounded like he wanted us to go to the edge of the glacier. We should go back to where Neil dropped us off.”

“But they’ll be south of there,” Scott said. “We can probably walk down the edge though, is what he means.”

They backed up the journals, splitting them between the two of them, and left the observation hut. Outside it was much darker than before, and the snow was falling at a slow and steady pace.

“It’s not so bad,” Stiles nodded.

“Tell that to Neil, who’s trying to land a plane on this slick snow up on the glacier,” Scott contended.

Stiles huffed, and led the way, as they stumbled through the clearing. This time he was a bit more careful and made sure not to cross the path of any bear cubs that might be playing, or, possibly making snow bear angels. At the beginning of the tree line, Stiles was about to turn around and tell Scott that this is why they were friends, that he was the Robin to his Batman, when a crash of branches to his left caught his eye instead.

He froze.

“Scott?” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

He slowly bent back and looked at Scott. “Another bear?” he hissed. Then the growling started and Stiles snapped his head back.

“That does not sound like the bear from earlier,” Scott replied.            

And it all happened so fast. He wasn’t sure if it was him or Scott who yelled “Run!”, but he high tailed it forward and didn’t care where he was going. He climbed a small, rocky hill, and followed it down, stubbing his toe on a rock and falling into a tree. A branch dug into his jacket and tore the back.

“Oh crap,” he said. “Scott, I think we’re safe,” he huffed, having trouble breathing in the colder air. He glanced up. “Scott?”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He’d let the severe asthmatic run behind him.  
         

 

* * *

 

“Damnit,” he cursed when he saw the snow bank he’d fallen into just a few minutes before. He found a log and sat on it, trying to clear his head, but the echo of words kept repeating over and over again. _There’s not much I care to think about or remember. Except for Stiles._ He breathed in deep. _I don’t deserve him._

Then some yelling a good distance to his left caught his attention.

“Scott?” he cried. Stiles jumped to his feet and started running toward where the sounds had come from. He sent up a silent thought that Scott better be alright. It took him a few minutes, but Stiles passed a small clearing where the snow looked disturbed. He paused for a few seconds before deciding to take a closer look. Dark shadows littered the areas where the snow was in upheaval. He walked around it, unable to make out what had happened, but somehow sure _something_ wasn’t right about the scene before him.

“Stiles!”

But that wasn’t the voice of his relieved best friend. It was the voice of an annoyed park ranger.

“Ranger Hale,” Stiles rolled his eyes. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

Derek kept his stern frown in place and grabbed Stiles arm. He looked pissed. “Come on, the plane is waiting and this storm is not getting better.”

“But Scott,” Stiles implored. “He’s still—”

“You’re buddy is already on the plane, wrapped in a blanket.”

Stiles shook off Derek’s grip, and casually replied, “Then lead the way, Ranger Rick.”

After taking a few steps in Hale’s wake, Stiles stopped in his tracks. He knelt down and picked something up. Something his brain didn’t want to comprehend.

“What is it now?” Derek’s voice rang, seething with annoyance.

Stiles gulped. “It’s Scott’s inhaler,” he explained. He handed it to Derek. “And it’s covered in blood.”


	7. By the Lights of the Circus Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more out there with them in the woods than the animals in the warning pamphlet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I have to say, I don't own anything from Teen Wolf! The characters, situations, and definitely the conversations all belong to Jeff Davis and the wonderful writers. All I have to say is things are bound to happen as they should, so if you have some deja vu with the show...it's just fate working itself out. 
> 
> And as always, thank you to thecruixe for being the best beta, always working out the kinks and making me feel better about everything.

He handed the bloody inhaler to a surprised Derek.

“It’s still warm,” the ranger replied, staring down at it. “Wait,” he met Stiles’ eyes. “Scott? The guy in the plane...” Derek panicked. “His name was Jackson.”

With a huff of air, Stiles’ mouth dropped and he shook his head. “Scott,” he said. He looked around them in the darkness and shouted, “Scott!”

Before he had time to take another breath, arms were wrapping around him and covering his mouth. Stiles struggled to get free, panic shooting through him as Derek pulled him behind a group of trees.

He felt the ranger’s hot breath against his ear. “Shh,” Derek whispered. And Stiles got it, in that moment, he understood. Whatever happened to Scott, whatever thing attacked him, it might be waiting around for a second course. Stiles met Derek’s wide eyes and nodded, then felt the rush of pressure and warmth leave him. The sudden chill sent a cold adrenaline through his veins.

Derek got his attention, and pointed to their left, in the direction he was assuming the plane was.  Stiles nodded, then realized what the ranger meant.

“Wait,” he whispered. His voice sent Derek back at him, grabbing the collar of his jacket, and throwing him up against a nearby tree. His eyes were inches from Stiles’.

“The plane,” he gritted. His brows furrowed and Stiles couldn’t look away. “We have to get to that plane.”  

“You think I’m just going to leave my best friend out here to die?” Stiles spat back. “I’m not losing two people I love to this fucking place.”

Derek seemed to tense even more, but loosened his grip on Stiles and stepped back. “You think you’re  in any position to find him in this storm? In the dark? With a predator out here?” Derek smiled eerily, “You have no idea what you are dealing with.” He let go of Stiles completely and turned around. “You think you can do anything right now, like this? Well you can not do a single thing.”

Stiles scoffed. “If you think removing all the contractions from your sentences makes your argument more valid,” he said, “Then you. Are. Wrong.” His eyes fell to the scene--the bloody scene--before them. He knew Derek was on his side, and that he was probably right. But Stiles couldn’t leave Scott alone out here, not if there was a chance he was still alive.

“Look,” Derek said. “If we go back to the plane, Neil can do some fly overs. Maybe radio for help.” Those green eyes bore into Stiles as Derek glared and pursed his lips. “And Cassey’s bound to have something in that plane you could use to search with...a spotlight, a loudspeaker...”

“Okay,” Stiles agreed. And then Derek’s face did something weird. Stiles thought he looked startled for a second, like he hadn’t thought it would be that easy. “Lead the way.”

And that’s how Stiles distracted himself from thinking about his best friend potentially being bloodied and dead somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness--by focusing his attention at Derek’s--footprints. They walked in silence through an area of heavy trees for what seemed like an hour. After the first couple of minutes, Stiles didn’t even have to concentrate on Derek’s--feet, he just kept thinking about being able to feel his own again. His sore muscles tensed with every step, but all he could do was try to control his breathing.

“Look, are we almost there?” he groaned. He knew if they made it to the plane, Neil would know what do. Stiles knew that the mountainman that befriended him was his only real hope at finding Scott alive.

But when he looked up at Derek’s form, the man was frozen still, his hand up in the air to silence Stiles. He walked up behind the ranger, and tried to follow his gaze through the treeline. The glacier shone in the night, the reflection of light almost blinding in comparison to the snow. It was majestic, almost a still life out of another world. Stiles allowed his eyes to adjust, then searched for any sign of the plane. That’s when he saw it.

“What the--”

“Stiles, run for the plane!” Derek yelled and pushed him forward. The force sent Stiles tumbling and unable to catch himself. He stopped and squinted at the shape moving across the glacier’s surface.

And then Stiles ran. He inhaled the cold air, scorching his throat, and exhaled groan after groan. His feet were soaking wet and completely numb. He couldn’t process what it was he had just seen on the ice, and he couldn’t let himself believe that Derek wasn’t right behind him. He wouldn’t let his eyes look anywhere other than at the plane, the safe haven, the thing that would save him and could save Scott. By the time he was a hundred yards from it, trying his best not to step in the wrong place as he ascended the glacier, Stiles heard a shriek from the left. It was loud and echoed in the valley, and though he didn’t want to muse on it, he knew that it wasn’t human. And he also knew it didn’t come from an animal, at least not any animal he‘d ever heard of.

Whatever he had seen on the ice wasn’t like anything he had ever seen. But he kept running. It got easier at the glacier flattened out and he felt the tension leave him as he stepped up to the running plane.

“Neil!” he shouted, but the engine was too loud. Stiles stepped up to the door and yanked it open, glancing behind him to see where Derek was. There was no sight of him. “Shit,” he cursed, but threw himself into the body of the plane. “Neil,” he breathed. Stiles pulled himself inside, still numb from the knees down, and tried to focus.

On his knees, he glanced at the front seats expecting a scowling Jackson wrapped in a blanket, and a worried Neil to greet him. What he saw ripped a scream from his lungs and made him lunge backward into the tail of the plane.

“Oh my god,” he cried. Stiles closed his eyes. “No. No. No. NO!”

When he opened them, the blood was still splattered across the front window. Neil’s body was still leaning against the dash, neck broken, and riddled with gashes--claw marks going down his back. Derek was in the front of plane, clutching the radio and yelling into it. He dipped his head down in frustration and turned to Stiles. Beneath the lines and points, on the face Stiles was so used to seeing with an infinite scowl, fear radiated from Derek’s eyes. If Stiles thought it wasn’t from his own shaking form, he’d have realized the ranger’s lips quivering.

“Stiles!” Suddenly Derek’s face was in his face, and his warm hands cradled Stiles’ cheeks. “Stiles we have to get out of here.”

But he couldn’t focus, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel anything except the absolute terror of the violence surrounding him. He felt his Death, knocking on the door, ready to invite itself in. Stiles licked his lips and gulped.

“Is this what he felt like?”

Derek looked at him, concerned and confused. “Who?”

Stiles breathed. “Scott? Neil? My dad? Before they died. Did they feel like this?”

Realization shone in Derek’s eyes. “You’re not going to die,” he said. “But we have to get out of here.”

Stiles dropped his eyes and laughed. “And go where? That thing, Derek, are we going to talk about what that was? It found Scott, and it found the plane. It’ll find us.”

“What killed Neil isn’t the same thing that attacked Scott,” Derek explained.

“And how do you know that?” Stiles asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Derek replied. “The hut, Stiles. Can you get us there?” Stiles didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. “Stiles!” Derek shook him. “We’re not dying out here. Snap out of it. Get up.” Derek grabbed some kit from the side of the plane and jumped out. “You can stay here, then. With the dead body,” Derek leaned in. “Alone.”

That got Stiles up and out of the plane, trekking down the glacier in front of Derek. If he hadn’t been so terrified, he would’ve grinned at the idea that Derek might be checking him out this time. Whatever attraction he felt physically for the ranger, it outweighed the total reality that Derek might be the only person who could keep them both alive at this point. And that made him the most important thing in Stiles’ near future.

They walked in silence until Stiles registered their approach to the treeline.

“If we follow this up to where--” he cringed at the thought of Neil. “To where the plane was before...I can find the trail to the observation hut.” Derek nodded and began walking next to Stiles, glancing at him a few times as if he still didn’t think he was okay.

“Stiles, I--”

“You know what, Ranger? Why don’t you level with me about what that thing was. You’re the husky mountain man,” Stiles said snidely. “Tell me what moves like that across ice? Okay, what does that? Slithers on snow?”

Derek grabbed Stiles’ shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said. They stopped. “All I know is that this storm is going to get worse. And if we don’t get out of it soon, we’ll have bigger problems than wondering what might come and eat us.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and kept walking, pushing the thoughts in his mind back under the surface. But it didn’t eat Neil, he cringed. He shook himself and thought about safety in the hut.

They found a rhythm and in complete silence made their way up to the glacier’s edge, until Stiles saw a familiar crevasse, and pointed to the trees beneath it.

“Here,” he said. And with that, they began to throw their packs and prepared to climb down. Stiles went first, slipped, and fell on his wrist. “Fuck,” he wailed. “Ow, ow, ow.”

Derek knelt down in concern. “Stiles,” he shouted.

“It’s just my wrist,” Stiles replied.

Derek stood up and turned around to begin his descent. He’d just pushed his foot into the first hole of the slope when a loud crack rang out, and as Stiles blinked to focus more on the ranger above him, Derek crashed to the ground next to Stiles. His eyes were closed but his mouth was moving. Stiles couldn’t hear anything. His pulse was pounding in his head and suddenly his stomach pinched.

Stiles rolled over and threw up.

“Stiles,” he heard Derek moan. “Get out of here. Run.”

“No,” Stiles shook his head. “What--” he stopped and looked at Derek’s body. There was blood pooling in the snow around his left arm. “Did someone shoot you?”

“I don’t have time to explain.” Derek’s face contorted in pain.

“I’m not leaving you here,” Stiles said.

At that, Derek sat up, clutched his arm, and turned to Stiles. But something was wrong with his face. His brow was furrowed in more than just pain, and his mouth--

“D-Derek?” Stiles stuttered.

When the ranger opened his mouth to speak, Stiles gawked at the teeth that seemed to emerge from Derek’s lips.

“Go,” he growled. He wouldn’t look at Stiles. Then they both looked up to the glacier’s edge, where the rumble of engines carried down to them. “They’re coming,” Derek huffed. “Run to the hut and don’t come out.”

Stiles grabbed his pack and rushed to pull Derek with him, but he pushed Stiles back and met Stiles’ eyes.

Blue. They were a stark, arctic blue.

“The hell with this,” Stiles ran.

He clutched the pack to his chest and hurled himself through the woods. He couldn’t have a panic attack, not now. If he could get to the hut, get out of the woods, he’d be safe--safe from that thing, safe from the cold, safe from Derek.

When his pulse evened out, he realized someone was running with him, behind him. Derek was following him. Was it Derek? Stiles had no idea what or who else was out in the woods with them. Because that had been a gunshot, and a bullet in Derek’s arm. Crazy bears and reptilian beasts aside, who would be out shooting park rangers in the middle of a storm and a deserted Alaskan glacier? Stiles could get over the bears. And maybe even the possible discovery of a nordic crocodile. But add in a crazy person with a gun to that equation? And the things happening to Derek’s face...

“I give up,” he shouted, but hardly anything came out of his hoarse throat. He’d crossed a creek, and cut over a ridge, but whoever was behind him was just getting closer. “I. Fucking. Give. Up,” Stiles cried, and threw himself into the familiar clearing he’d just run into. He fell on his wrist, which was already injured, and found himself moaning as the pain shot up his arm.

Someone grabbed him by the back of his jacket and pulled him up. Then there was that blue again. And Derek was there, pulling him across the clearing with his good arm, and clutching the left one to his chest. His face had righted itself, but he wouldn’t look at Stiles as they trudged through the newly fallen snow.

“Get off me!” Stiles shook out of Derek’s grip and ran to the door of the observation hut. Throwing it open, he practically dove inside and fell against a wall, letting out a pained groan. He let the pack filled with his father’s journals fall away, and held his wrist up to his face. He couldn’t see squat in the hut.

Derek rushed inside, closing the door and falling in a heap at Stiles’ feet. He heard the ranger rummaging around in his bag, and a few seconds later, a lantern lit up the hut. Derek had a gash in his forehead, and his eyes kept flashing blue as he threw off his coat and began tearing off the left sleeve of his ranger shirt.

“What are you doing?” Stiles asked. And that’s when he saw it. The gunshot wound in Derek’s bicep--chiseled, yes--was also emitting a purple smoke, and--glowing? Slightly glowing? “What the hell is that?” Stiles gaped. The veins around the wound were turning black, too. “What the hell, Derek? Who shot you? And why is it doing that?” Stiles narrowed his eyes and added, “And what the hell is up with your eyes? Stiles wants to know what hellmouth opened and released all this shit?”

“The Argents,” Derek spat and fell forward, catching himself with his good hand.

Stiles blinked. “What? Like Allison? Gerard?”

Derek huffed and his jaw tensed. “Yes, Stiles.”

“The Argents are the ones that shot you? Why? What did they have anything to do with any of this?” Stiles hands were flailing in front of him despite how much it hurt to move. Every muscle in his body was either sore from the day before or overworked from running for his life. His wrist was throbbing, and his throat felt on fire.

Derek didn’t look any better. His skin was pale and covered in sweat. His eyes had flickered back to normal, and he lost the angry glare he’d given Stiles and faltered, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what? That thing with your eyes?” Stiles asked. He sat up on his knees and pulled the bottom of his shirt down from under his coat and tore. “Com’ere,” he said. Derek looked up at him but didn’t move. “Let me put this around your arm, you idiot.”

“That won’t help me,” Derek said. “The bullet is killing me.” He turned away and started rummaging in the pack again.

“I know I’m not a doctor but,” Stiles said, “That doesn’t look like anything some echinacea and a good night’s sleep couldn’t take care of. I mean, c’mon Derek, chin up.” Stiles rolled his eyes. “What did you say to me at the plane? We--neither of us--are going to die out here.”

Derek stopped. He pulled out a large knife holster and threw it at Stiles. “If I can’t think of something, I’m gonna need you to cut off my arm,” he stated flatly. He grabbed the ripped piece of Stiles’ shirt and wrapped it around his arm, tying it up with his mouth. And there were those teeth again. Were they normally that sharp?

Stiles looked at him. “Dude, did you get a screw loose when you fell?” Derek stared at him. “I’m not cutting off your arm.”

Derek huffed and shook his head.

“Look, are you going to tell me what is really going on here?”

“You don’t really want to know,” Derek answered.

Stiles exhaled and closed his eyes. “Neil is dead. Scott is--” He opened his eyes and tried to blink back his tears. “--Scott’s out there, probably dying. You’ve been shot. I have to say Derek, I’m in this. Me--the anthropologist from sunny San Diego--is smack dab in the middle of this horror movie.” Derek had moved beside him. Their shoulders were barely touching, but Stiles could feel the other man’s warmth radiating through. He realized Derek was feverish. “Wait,” Stiles’ mind started racing. All of this happened at the glacier, or near it, in the area of his dad’s observation hut. He turned to the wounded man beside him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my father, does it?”

Derek wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“Derek! This is when you tell me what is going on.”

“I’m shifting,” Derek whispered. “Against my will.”

Stiles tilted his head. “Shifting?”

“You don’t know anything, do you?” And Derek’s eyes were on Stiles’, back to the bright blue they had been when he’d fallen. Then his feature’s started changing back to the contorted face he’d seen back at the glacier. His brow began bulging, and his teeth extended out. He had hair all over his face, and when Stiles dropped his gaze in horror, it landed on Derek’s hands which--OH-MY-GOD--were actually becoming--honest to god, “Oh gross,” fingernails extending out to deathly sharp weapons--claws.

“Oh my god,” Stiles gasped and flew across the hut to the other wall.

Derek murmured, “I’m in complete control. The poison is just affecting my ability to suppress the change.”

“Change into what?” Stiles laughed nervously, his heart was beating in his throat. “I gotta say, Derek, not a good look for you.”

Stiles blinked and Derek was back to his normal self. His arm looked worse though.

“If the infection reaches my heart, it will kill me,” Derek explained. “So can you do it?”

“Hmm?” Stiles was still stuck on the crazy facial distortions and sinking feeling that Derek didn’t seem to understand how crazy the whole “cut my arm off in the middle of the winter wilderness” sounded. Derek grabbing the knife and holding it up shook Stiles from his thoughts.

“Are you gonna be able to get past this?” Derek asked through a pained expression.

“Yeah, I think so,” Stiles replied. “But the sight of you bleeding to death in front of me might rack up a few years of therapy bills that, frankly, I would really like to avoid.”

“You faint at the sight of blood?” Derek spat incredulously.

“No,” Stiles frowned. “But I might at the sight of a chopped off arm!” At that, Stiles looked at Derek’s arm. The black was spreading up his arm, and coming out of the wound. “Maybe we should brave the storm, try to find that ranger outpost on the North Road. Would that have a radio?”

“We are not going back out there,” Derek answered.

“Why not?”

“Not when I can’t protect myself!”

Stiles blinked. “So you’re going to cut off your arm here in this sterile environment where you’ll surely survive?” He regretted the sarcasm almost immediately, but couldn’t stop the anger rising within him, because Stiles knew there was something missing from all of this. There was an explanation for what was happening, he knew it.

Derek glared at him. “Either help me cut off my arm,” he started, then bolted across the room and grabbed Stiles’ shirt. Suddenly Derek’s lips were brushing against his ear, and yep, there it was again, that weird mixture of fear, anger, and lust, filling up his lower belly. The ranger’s hot breath tickled down Stiles’ neck. “Or I’ll rip out your throat. With my teeth.”

Stiles started shaking. He pulled back and shivered, “I’m so not buying that threat.” He met Derek’s eyes and felt the heat radiating off the injured man. His face was scowling but his eyes, those green pools Stiles refused to admit he was fond of, they were pleading with an urgent fear. He felt Derek’s grip tighten and Stiles dropped his eyes to his lips, where the teeth were elongating slowly, mesmerizing him.

Then Derek let go of him, threw himself sideways, and began puking up a thick black liquid.

“Oh, come on!” Stiles gagged.

“It’s my body trying to heal itself,” Derek explained.

Before Stiles could reply, he heard a distant noise--a scream. Someone was calling his name.

“Scott,” he said and ran to the door. He tried to shove it open with his injured wrist and cringed. Instead he used his body to throw open the door, ran into the darkness, and allowed himself to hope beyond hope that he would hear another shout.  

“Stiles!” Derek yelled. “Get back here!”

“It’s Scott!” he called back and started running in the direction he’d heard the noise. “SCOTT!”

He approached the clearing and kept shouting for his best friend, then remained still and waited for a response. He had no idea how long he was out there, only that he had to keep trying. Repeating the procedure of shouting and then waiting in silence, Stiles stood still in place with both hope and fear, hope for Scott, and fear that he had to stay where he was--for his life was in danger the longer he waited out there.

Then Stiles felt a rush of blood to his head and couldn’t focus, his eyes watered and he couldn’t catch his breath. He heard screams far away but he couldn’t place where they had come from, he couldn’t place where he was. Everything was dark, and dense, and he could only see shadows beneath his fluttering eyes. Stiles clutched his chest and tried to steady himself. It felt like he was dying, but he couldn’t die. Not now. He was so close to finding Scott. But he couldn’t shout, something was wrong with his mouth. Prickles of agonizing pain filtered through him, fire and fear, and all he wanted was to lay down and forget. To go back to his life before this hell had taken over.

“Don’t give up, Stiles,” he heard a familiar voice say. And suddenly he was in someone’s arms, being carried. “Breathe with me, Stiles,” Scott said. “Breathe.”

“You’re not dead,” Stiles whispered. He felt Scott kneeling and pulling him into the hut, the light on his friend’s face heralded him back from the hell he’d been subjected to.

“I’m not dead,” Scott smiled. “I think.” His friend pulled Stiles into a seated position, turned around, and gasped. “Who the hell are you?”

Stiles coughed, “Scott, Ranger Derek Hale,” he paused. “Dying freak of nature, this is my best friend, who, as you can see, is very much alive.” Stiles felt a tinge of glee that he’d been right to believe in Scott.

Derek, still clutching his wounded arm, was shooting a token glare at Scott. But then Stiles followed it, and realized he wasn’t looking at Scott’s face, but at Scott’s abdomen, where, “Holy shit, Scott! What happened to your stomach?”

While Scott explained that a wolf attacked him and that he felt it bite him, he held up his shirt the entire time. Under the blood stains and torn fabric, his perfectly untarnished stomach was shining in the fluorescent lantern light. Derek merely closed his eyes and frowned, but Stiles, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say...except, “What you’re saying is impossible.”

“I know,” Scott agreed. “But it gets weirder,” he continued, “I mean, I could hear you through all those trees.”

“I was yelling your name pretty loud before I had that panic attack.”

“Yeah, but Stiles,” his friend frowned. “I was on the other side of the glacier. I ran over here when I heard you.”

“Are you two idiots done yet?” Derek rolled his eyes. “Scott,” he nodded, “You were bitten by an alpha werewolf.”

Scott’s eyebrows flew up and he laughed and slapped Stiles’ thigh. “Good one, Derek.”

But Stiles’ face had gone completely still, because, yeah, now that he thought about it, that actually made perfect sense. Derek’s crazy eyes, his freakish face, and whatever the hell was happening to his body. Oh, and the fact that someone just shot him out of the blue. Oh, and what apparently just happened to Scott.

His friend noticed Stiles’ reaction and said, “Stiles. Wait, you don’t believe him, do you?”

“Scott. Buddy, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in the last few hours.” Stiles kept Derek’s gaze.

“I’m sure there is some other explanation.”

Stiles turned to Scott. “Yeah? And what would that be? You know what Spock always says, ‘If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable...’ blah blah blah.”

“Oh really? So I’m a werewolf, and let me guess, so are you?” Scott turned to Derek. “Who bit you? A...what? An alpha? Are they just running around Alaska looking for fresh meat?”

Derek closed his eyes in annoyance. “No, I was born this way. And I don’t know who bit you, Scott, there aren’t supposed to be werewolves in these mountains.” Derek opened his eyes and turned to Stiles. “Now, can we get on with this before I keel over.”

“No,” Stiles groaned. “I am not cutting off your arm. End of discussion.”

“I’m a werewolf, Stiles, it will heal. See my forehead? The gash is gone.”

Stiles looked up at Derek’s scalp, and it was as immaculate as the day he’d met him. His mouth fell open a little bit before he snapped it back and replied, “So what, you’ll just regenerate and arm? Last I checked werewolves weren’t any relation to starfish.”

Derek started to say something, but coughed up more of the black goo instead.

“Ughh,” Scott turned away and glared at Stiles.

“If I don’t counteract this using the stuff that’s poisoning me with an antispell, which I don’t see happening anytime soon, one of you is going to have to cut my arm off, or I will die. Right here, right in front of you.”

Stiles looked up, startled. “Wait, what? What antispell?”

Derek rolled his eyes, “It’s not happening. We don’t have a bullet like the one that shot me.”

“Yeah, but what do you need the bullet for?”

“It would have the same kind of wolfsbane that’s poisoning me. We could reverse the effects.”

Scott’s eyes shot to Derek. “Wolfsbane? Like,” he threw off his pack and ripped it open. “Monkshood?”

Derek’s mouth dropped. “Yeah...” He stared at Scott’s hands as he shuffled through the bag, going through the contents. “There’s over a hundred different variations,” Derek explained.

“I know,” Scott said, a smile etching its way up his face. “Stiles’ dad documented dozens of them. Here it is,” he pulled out the binder full of flowers. Then it dawned on Stiles. Those purple flowers. When Derek touched them, they turned black. They affected him. As the realization hit him about their previous encounter, and then the fact that his father had been documenting the plant that could kill a werewolf, Stiles missed Scott scoot across to Derek and begin pushing his fingers through the bullet wound. When Stiles’ eyes fell on that, he turned away, “Ahh, come on! What!”

“We’re finding the bullet,” Scott explained.

“We’ll be able to smell the variation of monkshood,” Derek breathed.

Stiles kept his eyes on the floor and shook his head. He heard Scott flip through the pages of the binder. “This one,” he said. “Right?” Scott shoved the dried up flower in Derek’s face, who winced, and nodded in agreement. “What do we do?”

Derek coughed, “Light it on fire,” he coughed up more black goo. “Stick it in the wound,” he croaked, and then passed out against the wall.

“Woah,” Stiles rushed to Derek’s side and held up his face. “Derek?” But it was no use, the ranger had passed out. “Scott, do it! Now!”

“I don’t,” Scott began, “Man, I don’t have a lighter.”

“Look in that bag,” Stiles ordered. While Scott was throwing the contents of the pack all over the hut, Stiles muttered to himself, “This is great. My dad is dead. Neil is dead. My best friend is a werewolf, and I have the hots for a dying werewolf ranger. People are shooting at us, and some equatorial lizard thing is lurking out there in the snow.” He sighed. “And if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have to cut off said ranger’s arm.”

“Found it!” Scott shouted.

Stiles grabbed Derek’s arm and motioned for Scott to lean over it. “So we just, light it on fire?”

“I guess so?” Scott questioned. He hit the lighter and held the flame under the dried wolfsbane. It began to burn the flower with a blue flame and Scott paused. “We just rub it in?”

“Do it,” Stiles quivered.

Scott sighed and rammed it into the wound, rubbing it in as he squirmed.  

Derek’s eyes flew open. He shot forward and sunk down to the ground screaming into Stiles’ lap. His body was convulsing, hips flying into the air, arms and legs flailing, but the black in his veins was disappearing. After about a minute of that, with Stiles overtly cushioning Derek’s face with his crotch, Derek stilled and closed his eyes. The silence was killing Stiles as he kept looking from Derek to Scott and back again.

“Did it work?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Derek whispered.

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't that how every chapter should end? In Stiles' crotch?


	8. There’s a Cold Blood Running Through Your Veins...But It Keeps Me Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As exhaustion took him over, Stiles stared up at the sky and cringed.  
> The full moon was coming soon.  
> He somehow believed that this was just the beginning.  
> Chaos was coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so quite a long wait, I apologize. I've been working on other fics over the past months, so hopefully now this will take top priority. 
> 
> once again, thank you to thecruixe for cheering me on and getting me to write!

 

Stiles couldn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew at some point someone had put the heavy ranger’s jacket on top of him, and when he woke up, he was on his side, roasting between two warm bodies. He wanted to jump up and get somewhere else, anywhere, to safety, just the hell out of dodge, but he kept still. He knew he’d be sore from the day before, rather, the heinous night. He knew he needed to remind himself that he was living in a different world. With the new day came revelations of werewolves, supernatural hunters, and giant murderous lizards. Oh, and that sinking suspicion that John Stilinski was somehow mixed up in all of it. That Monkshood binder was no coincidence, or the wolf studies.

“Stiles,” Scott said. His eyes shot open and focused on the wall in front of him. “We need to get moving. It’s daylight.”

His best friend appeared to be wide awake.

“Hrmmm,” Stiles moaned and rolled onto his back and into the warm chest of Derek Hale. “Ahhhh!” he cringed and shot forward. “Moving, yeah,” he gulped. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

Derek seemed recovered from the wolfsbane bullet, and back to his eye-rolling, scowling self the minute Scott started talking about getting back to McCarthy and Allison. Stiles wanted to ask more about the Argents, but swallowed down some of the chili and kept his mouth shut. The rations left in the hut’s crates weren’t exactly his ideal meal to celebrate not being murdered, but hey, what’s a little cold chili to remind you you’re lucky to be alive? They packed up in relative silence, apart from Stiles’ intermittent sighs and groans of pain that came with certain movements. His wrist still ached but he kept that to himself too.

When Derek grabbed his jacket, Stiles couldn’t help but watch him shimmy into it. He had such interesting movements, staccato and controlled, so unlike what his form had been subjected to the night before when Scott applied the antispell to his wound. Derek seemed like someone who held himself together with intent and discipline, and Stiles almost felt like he’d invaded the guy’s privacy, seeing him so unravelled like that.

As Scott climbed out of the hut, Derek glanced back at Stiles, who met his eyes and pushed thoughts of the ranger coming undone in other ways to the back of his mind. Wait, Stiles mused, Could werewolves smell emotions? Like--?

“Stiles!” Derek yelled.

“Coming!” he cringed.

 

They made their way through now familiar forest, and Stiles found himself glancing at Scott and reminding himself that his best friend was still alive.

“Stop doing that,” Scott finally chided.

“What?” Stiles laughed. “Can’t I just be excited that you’re alive? And not to mention the fact that you’re a freaking werewolf. Arooo!”

Scott frowned. “It’s not as awesome as you think it is.”

Stiles looked to Derek for a comment. The ranger merely blinked and walked ahead of them.

“No comment from the born werewolf, then?”

Derek ignored him and picked up his pace.

Stiles guessed he wasn’t renewed with a sense of euphoria at still being alive despite the fact that Derek had been closer to death than any of them.

When they made it to the glacier, Derek pulled out a compass and began looking at the northern end of the white expanse.

“We’ll cross the glacier up there,” he pointed. “Then climb the first round of Maccoll peaks and head up a river bed to the North Road.”

Scott turned to Stiles, “Is that what we should be doing? Maybe we could get the plane to work?” They all turned around and eyed the other end of the glacier, where the plane should’ve been.

“What,” Stiles breathed, “the hell?”

Nothing. There was no sign of a plane on the surface of the glacier.

“I thought you said--” Scott began.

“They cleaned it up, they covered their tracks,” Derek interjected. And without another thought commanded, “Now, let’s go.”

“‘They’?” Scott questioned.

“We can talk while we walk,” Derek said, then hauled himself forward with a grunt, not bothering to look back at the bewildered men behind him.

And that’s how Derek and Scott started off the Long Hike, as Stiles had come to call it--Derek, angry and annoyed, Scott, angry and craving answers.

They went back and forth, Derek explaining that he could smell the lingering scents of half a dozen people on the glacier, and Scott asking how. Then he asked about shifting, and the full moon, what sort of forms they could take, and how the healing process worked. Derek explained it all, frustrated that each new detail seemed to create a handful of new questions.

“Speaking of having to heal,” Scott continued, and even Stiles found himself rolling his eyes. “Who exactly shot you? The same people that got rid of the plane?”

Derek stopped and turned to Stiles first, who, for a moment, thought the werewolf looked afraid. But then he blinked and saw revulsion, contempt, maybe even hate.

“The Argents,” Stiles answered.

“Allison?” Scott’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion.

Stiles rolled his head back against his shoulder which, “Owww,” actually hurt a lot. He’d have to find another way to emphatically stress his annoyance physically.

“Yes,” Derek affirmed. “Even Allison. They’re all in it, the women even more than the men.”

Stiles saw Derek’s shoulders tighten and his jaw tense. “Maybe we should talk about this another--”

Scott pushed himself into Derek’s face. “You don’t even know her.”

Derek fisted Scott’s collar. “And you do? What do you even know about these people?” Stiles jumped and tried to shove himself between them, because what he needed right now was his werewolf ranger guide and werewolf best friend beating the crap out of each other. Derek propped an arm against Stiles’ chest and beat him away. “They’ll stop at nothing to round us up and kill us without a second thought.”

His lip twitched and the lids of Derek’s eyes drooped as his hands fell away from Scott. He stepped back and turned away, holding himself low and guarded. Stiles watched him intently and wondered what--round us up and kill us.

“Oh my god,” Stiles breathed. Derek was a born werewolf. His family. The Hale fire. “It was arson,” he thought aloud. His eyes widened and he saw Derek in a completely different way, like a layer had just been peeled off. “Your family? That was the Argents?”

Stiles got no response but didn’t feel like he needed one. He turned and grabbed Scott’s shoulder. “They burned his family in their home. Remember that?”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Scott spat.

At that, Derek turned on his heels and raised his voice. “You think my family did anything to deserve that? There were innocents in there. Humans.” His green eyes were watering. “Children.”

Scott shrugged, “I’m sorry.” He stared at his feet and turned away from them. Stiles couldn’t help but stare at Derek--Derek the werewolf, Derek the park ranger, Derek the beautiful man who’d had everything ripped away from him in one horrible night.

“We should keep moving,” Derek finally said. He lunged forward and took the lead up the slope. Stiles looked back through the trees, unable to see the glacier anymore. They continued hiking for another two hours before Derek stopped and pulled out more rations. Stiles didn’t squawk when he saw Derek using a sharp claw to briskly open one of the cans. He was sure his eyes didn’t bulge when Derek handed him the can with a normal hand. All of them ate in a weighted silence, Scott not even facing them as he shoved more chili in his mouth with his fingers.

“How far is this gonna be, Derek?” Stiles asked. His body was aching and he felt just as mentally exhausted.

The ranger pointed up to the treeline ahead. “When we get to the top of this ridge, it’s downhill from there. At the bottom of that valley we’ll just be following the riverbed to the road.” Derek sighed, “It’s about thirty-five miles to McCarthy at that point.”

“Thirty-five miles?” Stiles barked.

“People will be looking for us,” Derek added. “I know Lucy. She has search and rescue out.” Stiles sighed in relief. Lucy. She’d be flipping out right now. The main ranger-in-charge and two others, three if you counted Neil, disappearing? Yeah, someone was bound to have noticed. In fact--

“Wasn’t there already a search and rescue coordinated for that dead body?” Stiles asked.

Derek tensed and kept his eyes glued to the forest floor. “Yeah,” he raised his brows.

“Who was it?” Stiles couldn’t help his curiosity. “What happened?”

Stiles didn’t notice immediately, but Derek stood up and walked away.

“Hey!” he called after him. Aching as he stood up, Stiles went after him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling back hard.

Derek whirled around with a scowl and pushed Stiles. “You shouldn’t get in the middle of this,” he said.

His heartbeat rising, Stiles replied through gritted teeth, “If you hadn’t noticed, Derek, I’m already in the middle of it. My dad was in the middle of it. You think it’s a coincidence that all of last night’s events happened the minute we started looking for his observation hut? Or that he came up here, in the middle of freaking nowhere, Alaska, to live in solitude? That he was studying wolves and god knows what else? Not to mention the binder full of monkshood!” Stiles took a breath, “If one’s an incident, two’s a coincidence, and three’s a pattern...then what’s four? I knew you were a pretty face, but oh my god, I never thought you were so dense, Derek.”

“It was an omega,” the ranger sighed. “Cut in half by hunters.” His eyes were staring wildly into Stiles’. “A wolf without a pack.” He leaned in and whispered, “He’d only be up here if there was an alpha up here too. When I realized that, and Neil told me you and your friend were out here, I--” Derek smiled wickedly, “--used my dense brain to figure you might be in danger.”

Stiles couldn’t take his eyes from the curve of Derek’s lips. He knew his heartbeat was increasing, but the proximity seemed to be pulling him even closer.

But then Derek stepped back and turned around. Over his shoulder he added, “I know all of this is connected, Stiles. When I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

The three of them packed up and continued on in silence, and before Stiles knew it, they were descending the ridge and could see the path in the valley below carved out by the riverbed. Derek made a few comments about making noise to avoid any surprise bear encounters, and Stiles rolled his eyes. He wondered if his painful grunts counted as noise, since every time he took a step forward on the decline, a wave of pain shot up his legs.

By the time they made if off the ridge, he had holes in his pants from all the shrubs, and was bleeding on his arm where he’d lost his balance and impaled it on a branch.

Derek continued to move forward across the now flat expanse, Scott not far behind, but Stiles stopped. “Can we take a second for the frail and exhausted human?” The two werewolves turned back as Stiles fingered some blood from his arm. “Not to mention, bloodied and battered.”

They agreed to stop, and Stiles sat on the gravelly bed of the small river, pulling out his last full bottle of water.

“Two and half hours until we reach the road,” Derek said as he sat down next to Stiles. He grabbed Stiles’ bloodied arm and shoved his bare hand up the jacket sleeve so he was touching skin.

“What are you--”

But then he felt a numbing warmth, which, after being a steady and cold numb for so long, tickled. Stiles’ eyes rolled into the back of his head as he felt the pain from the wound creep away. Derek’s hand left a buzzing sensation reverberating through Stiles’ arm, and when the contact was gone, he leaned into Derek’s shoulder aching for it back.

“That should help with some of the pain,” was the answer he got as Derek stood up and let Stiles fall over.

Was that some crazy werewolf ability? Taking away someone’s pain? Obviously, Derek couldn’t heal Stiles, not the way Scott and Derek had healed, but--

“That is so cool!” Stiles fist pumped. Scott leaned down and sat on the other side of him.

“What’s so cool?” he asked.

Stiles smiled, “Derek basically just numbed my arm with his special werewolf powers.” He punched Scott’s arm. “I feel no pain!”

Scott punched him back.

“Ow!” Stiles cringed, “Fragile, injured human here.”

“I thought you felt no pain,” Scott laughed.

“You definitely brought me back to reality.”

Derek interrupted them and claimed if Stiles could joke around, he could trudge forward up the river bank.

And he did, but not silently. He made sure Derek heard every grunt and groan. When the group stopped to use the bathroom, Stiles gave the ranger a hard time about his strict ‘leave no trace’ policy.

“You sure we shouldn’t bag whatever you just did over there?” Stiles laughed.

Derek glared at him and walked away.

Stiles glanced at Scott, who seemed confused but shrugged and followed Derek.

Thinking more on the ‘leave no trace’ mantra, Stiles remembered his somewhat intimate encounter with Derek after his Bonanza Mine Hike.

“Hey,” he said, catching up to Derek. He struggled to keep pace with the werewolf, but his curiosity was killing him. “When you were wrapping my feet the other day, that was monkshood that I pulled out, right?”

Derek kept his eyes scanning the area in front of them, but nodded.

“What did it do to you?” Stiles asked. “Why did you react that way?”

He trained his eyes on Derek’s face as the ranger reacted to his query. “It was a mountaintop variant. It made me--” he faltered. “It just made me tense up. I’m sorry, you caught me off guard with it.”

“You’re lying,” Scott exclaimed. He’d caught up with them and was walking on the other side of Derek. Scott’s wide eyes focused on Derek’s even wider ones. “I heard an uptick in your heartbeat,” Scott said. “You’re lying.”

Derek rolled his eyes and licked his lower lip, a gesture Stiles honed in on involuntarily. He’d just taught Scott the trick to recognizing a lie a few hours earlier.

“So what did it really do?” Stiles smiled. He recalled the intrusion of Derek’s hard body against his.

“Some call it Devil’s Helmet,” Derek explained. “It looked like Colombian Monkshood. It shouldn’t have been growing this far north.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You’re still not answering the question.”

Derek sighed, “Werewolves can’t get drunk.” Like that answer was going to satisfy Stiles Stilinski. Stiles threw his arm forward and motioned that he wanted a more satisfying answer. Derek huffed.

“Come on man,” Stiles whined. “I’m a researcher. It’s what I do.”

“That variant can dull the senses, poison us until we have fewer inhibitions,” he explained through his frown.

“Delightful,” Stiles said, just as Scott whipped his head sideways and shouted, “We can’t get drunk?”

After an hour of Derek explaining to Scott more physical changes he’d face as a werewolf, including the change at the full moon, the group came upon a rocky incline and Derek offered to go ahead and scout a trail.

While Stiles was definitely not following the back of Derek’s form with his eyes, Scott approached him and pulled him back a few feet.

“What do you really know about that guy?” Scott asked earnestly.

Stiles blinked. “Derek? You’re questioning the guy that’s saving our lives?”

Scott seemed conflicted, and paused for a moment. “He could be the alpha. Think about it,” he pointed. “He wasn’t around when I was bitten. He was the last person to see Neil alive. The Argents shot him, Stiles. And I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to remember all that stuff that happened when we were in high school.” Stiles stepped back and stared wide-eyed at his best friend. “Those animal attacks that kept happening? They make a lot more sense if you change them to werewolf attacks.”

“And Derek Hale was there,” Stiles thought aloud.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “He was even charged with his sister’s death.”

“They dropped the charges when they found out it was his sister,” Stiles added. “But Scott, he’s just trying to help you. He didn’t ask for any of this.”

Scott sighed and rolled his eyes. “You need to stop thinking with your--”

“Hey, I’m offended you would even go there,” Stiles interrupted, but he noted Scott’s observation. Derek’s appearance did factor into Stiles opinion of him. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Stiles had seen some of himself in those painful glances. He’d see Derek’s loss.

“Think, Stiles. If you’re in the middle of this, then Derek is at the center of it too. He even has a job up here.” Scott grabbed Stiles’ shoulder and squeezed. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t trust him, I just think we shouldn’t take what he says at face value.”

“You’re just saying that because he said Allison was going to kill you.”

“Alright, Stiles,” Scott said.

“Alright, Scott,” Stiles mimicked.

  


The North Road was in pretty good shape, the gravel still mostly intact after a summer of heavier traffic. But when they finally reached it, darkness had settled and there were no cars in sight. Derek insisted they keep walking toward McCarthy, and Stiles wished he could, but his exhaustion was taking over.

“Can we just, wait here?”

Derek sighed, his breath visible in the moonlight.  “There’s a rest stop in sixteen miles.”

“Stiles would never make it that far,” Scott interjected. He wrapped an arm around Stiles’ side and pulled him in for warmth. “We should make camp on the side of the road and wait for help.”

“You do that,” Derek said. “Build a fire and keep each other warm.”

Stiles frowned. “And what about you?”

“I’m going to make it to McCarthy by sunrise.”

“That’s insane,” Stiles replied. “Even with your wolfy abilities.”

Derek knelt down and shoved some snow in his water bottle. “I will make it.” He shot them a glare. “And then you’ll be rescued.” He turned his back and started forward, down the road, without another glance.

Stiles leered at him the entire time, until he was almost out of sight, but said, “Be careful,” under his breath.

He set his attention at throwing some stones in a circle while Scott gathered some firewood. After about twenty minutes, they finally maintained a flame, and though it didn’t quite dissipate the familiar cold Stiles’ body had settled into, the fire managed to warm him enough to settle his shaking.

He and Scott burrowed close.

“Stiles,” Scott said, his breath warm against Stiles’ cheek.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think your dad was a werewolf?”

Stiles breath hitched in his throat and he shivered. He had been avoiding that thought all day, trying to focus on keeping his body moving and getting rescued.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Why would he be studying wolves? I mean, he published articles about his observations. He--”

“But the monkshood doesn’t fit anywhere into that,” Scott said. No, it didn’t. “And after the Hale fire came up,” Scott continued. “I realized, I mean--I think this is right--that your dad left less than a week after that happened.”

Stiles mouth fell open. “No, I mean, Scott, come on. You don’t think he had anything to do with that?”

“At this point,” Scott sighed. “What do we really know about him?”

And Stiles didn’t respond because Scott was right. He was right about Derek and he was right about Stiles’ dad. They really didn’t know anything about them. They were stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere, and even if Derek managed to get them rescued, they’d still pretty much be stranded in the middle of nowhere, just a bit warmer. Neil, the only friend he had in Alaska, other than Lucy, was dead. The Argents were running around shooting people and apparently patrolling the entire park if that omega was any indication. That put Scott in danger, because, oh yeah, there’s an alpha werewolf on the loose biting innocent people.

As exhaustion took him over, Stiles stared up at the sky and cringed.

The full moon was coming soon.

He somehow believed that this was just the beginning.

Chaos was coming.

  


Stiles woke up with the fear that he’d be frozen solid, but his eyes found Scott kneeling in front of the fire.

“It’s morning,” Scott said. He threw a can of chili at Stiles and stood up. “We should start walking as soon as you eat.”

Walking would be a charitable term for what they ended up doing. Stiles had looped his arms around Scott’s neck and was being dragged down the gravel road. His leg muscles had been too sore to keep up with Scott, so the newly turned werewolf offered to give him some support. Silence settled between them, and Stiles lost track of how far they had made it. The rhythm of Scott’s steps and the strain of holding on had numbed him, and he started to doze off.

“Stiles!”

“Hmmph?” He had been drooling and lifted his head to see a truck speeding toward them. He flung himself off his best friend’s back and straightened. “That’s an NPS truck.”

Sharing a celebratory look, they careened forward. The green and white truck came to a halt and out came Lucy, with blankets and hot packs.

“Stiles!” she shouted and ran to embrace him. He practically collapsed into her. “You’re safe. You’re safe,” she repeated. “I got you.”

Scott sighed, “I’m fine.”

Lucy stood back and glanced at Scott. “You’re Scott? Derek said you weren’t as bad off as Stiles.” They shuffled into the warm cab of the truck, where Lucy had hot chocolate and electrolyte drinks for them.

“How is Derek?” Stiles managed to ask as Lucy began turning the truck around.

She kept her eyes on the road and answered, “He’s been on the sat phone since he got back. I don’t know how he hasn’t collapsed yet. But all hell broke loose after that dead body and Neil’s plane crash.”

“Plane crash?” Stiles blurted.

“You didn’t know?” Lucy hit the brakes and frowned. She sent Stiles a sad look before staring at the steering wheel. “Neil’s plane was found just a few miles outside of town, crashed near the North Road.”

Stiles gulped and looked at Scott.

“Poor Neil,” Scott sighed.

Lucy shook her head. “They haven’t found him yet.”

As she elaborated, explaining there had been no sign of Neil’s body in the wreckage, she also explained that the overall consensus was an animal had attacked the victim in the north of the park.

“An animal that ripped a person in half?” Stiles burst.

“What else would it have been?” Lucy replied.

A thick silence settled over the cab and Stiles drifted off with a weighted uneasiness.

  
  


It didn’t help that every time he closed his eyes, Stiles saw a plane doused in blood or a killer alligator or a maze of snow and trees--but he also had a fear for Scott, a sinking, lurking feeling peeking around his own terrors.

Back at the cabin, showered and medicated, Stiles had to bribe Lucy to leave by promising the lady ranger a breakfast in town the next day. When he and Scott finally ate their weight in reindeer steaks, they sat back on the futon and tried to get some rest.

But Stiles couldn’t stop thinking.

“Scott,” he whispered.

“What.”

Stiles turned over and looked at his friend. “Do you think the Alpha will come after you?”

Scott’s eyes crinkled. “No, why?”

“Because he bit you. You are in his pack now,” Stiles explained. “Derek said that omega that was killed came here because of the Alpha. Because it wanted to be a part of a pack. If we’re going by these terms, that means you’re a Beta. And you’re in his pack.”

“What? I didn’t agree to that!” Scott said. “What does a werewolf pack even do? Roam around naked in the moonlight? Howl?”

“That’s a good question. Maybe we could ask, oh I don’t know, Derek, the werewolf ranger who saved our lives?”

Scott raised a brow. “Is he even in a pack? Like I said, he could be the Alpha.”

“Is he in a pack?” Stiles mimicked. “Scott, his pack was murdered!”

“Okay, okay,” Scott sighed. “That’s terrible. I don’t see a benefit to being in a pack or being on my own. Look what happened to the omega? And if Derek’s entire family was murdered then how is there safety in numbers?”

Stiles rolled back onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he whispered. And all he could think about was how alone everyone is when they die. The omega. His Dad. Neil. He didn’t want Scott to be alone, and he didn’t want him to die. Especially in Alaska. “You don’t need any of that,” Stiles said. “I’m your pack.”

He heard Scott breath out and smile. “You’re my pack,” he repeated. And they eased into a sleep brought on by trauma, stress, and the exhaustion of hiking across miles and miles of rough wilderness.

  
  
  


All Stiles wanted when he woke up were pancakes and a beer. Which was odd, because he knew it was morning when he opened his eyes. He knew because it was painfully bright and because he couldn’t stop himself from shivering.

“Scott,” he moaned. “Give me werewolf warmth.”After a few seconds, he stole a glance to his side and saw the rest of the futon vacant. “Scott,” he shouted and bolted up.

After he scanned the entirety of the one room cabin in roughly three seconds, he saw the open front door and felt his heart thump into his throat.

He threw on about sixty layers and a pair of gloves before he rushed out of the cabin and tumbled down the steps.

“Scott?” he called again. The truck sat idle where it had been the night before and nothing seemed disturbed. Stiles practically threw himself into the cab, shoved the key in the ignition, and started the truck with a victory squeal. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as he backed out of the dirt drive and sped down the road. Everything seemed deserted and just as it had been. All he could think was that Scott either went to town and mindlessly forgot to shut the door--or--he had been abducted by a blood thirsty alpha werewolf or a righteous family of werewolf hunters.

By the time Stiles got to McCarthy, his heart wouldn’t stop thudding and his hands were shaking. He asked about Scott in the Saloon, at the store, and then made his way over by the “hotel” where a group of locals were huddled around a truck.

“Hey,” Stiles waved. “I don’t really have time for any introductions, but I’m Stiles Stilinski, John’s son, and I was wondering if you’d seen my friend Scott. He’s about this tall, black hair, undeniable latino charm?”

An older woman with greying hair stepped forward, frowning. “Weren’t you two caught up over by Maccoll peaks the last few days?”

Stiles nodded, “Yeah, uh huh. We got stranded up there. Look, have you seen him or not?”

“No,” she said and turned back to the group. “Haven’t seen your friend in town.”

A younger man, probably a few years older than Stiles, stepped forward. “You should really find him, it’s not safe right now,” the man explained.

“Paul!” the older woman hissed. “That’s not true,” she turned back to Stiles.

“What do you mean by ‘it’s not safe?’” Stiles asked. He wasn’t sure to what they could be referencing, because in his mind, nowhere, at any time, had he been safe in Alaska.

The man gulped and replied, “Someone was attacked on the other side of main street early this morning. Looks to be an animal attack of some kind.”

Stiles rolled his eyes at the words “animal attack” and pretended to be shocked. He tried to pry more details from the group, but all of them except Paul gave him the cold shoulder.

“Find your friend and stay inside,” the woman said as Stiles was leaving. “And don’t worry too much. Animal attacks happen all the time.”

“Understatement of the year,” Stiles tried to laugh.

As he sat back in the truck and stared out the grimy windshield, he wondered if he should call Derek. Or Lucy. What if Scott was with the Alpha? There was no way Stiles could help him on his own. And if it was the Argents? Derek wouldn’t help him and there was no way in hell Stiles was pulling Lucy into this mess. Either way, he had to go back to the cabin and form his plan.

Driving down the road in retreat, Stiles’ chest tightened, his jaw clenched. How could he have let his guard down? Time after time the shit just kept piling up and how had he let himself believe this was any different. That they would come back from what had happened and it would all just be okay?

It was never going to be okay.

Stiles saw someone walking in the middle of the road and felt his rage teeter over the edge. He felt his fist punch the horn over and over again but didn’t hear it over the buzzing in his head. He almost wanted to hit the idiot who appeared to be walking shirtless in the cool thirty four degree day.

“Scott?” Stiles hit the brakes. Stiles flung open the door and tried to get out of the cab, but was still wearing his seatbelt. He untangled himself and ran to Scott, who seemed dazed. Stiles grabbed Scott’s arms and checked him for injuries. He was covered in dirt and had a few leaves in his hair but appeared unharmed.

“I’m not hurt,” Scott said. “Werewolf? Remember?”

Stiles sighed. “What the hell? Where have you been? I’ve been worried and looking for you, and you know someone was killed in town this morning. It’s not safe for us out here, we need to get back to the cabin and formulate a plan. Some kind of exhaustive plan with lots of arrows and a few dozen escape strategies.”

Scott’s eyes were wide. “Someone died? How?”

“Animal attack of some kind, which,” Stiles drawled, “I’m started to suspect is just an excuse for “ _Werewolves are killing people left and right and there’s nothing we can do. Tea anyone?’_ ” The humor was lost on Scott who instead looked like he was going to throw up. Stiles tried to stay positive. “Dude, it’s going to be okay. Let’s get back to the warm safety of the cabin and board ourselves inside.”

They rode back in relative silence until Scott half whispered, “I think I killed that person in town.”

Stiles turned his head slowly away from the road and stared at his best friend. “What on earth would make you think that?”

“I dreamed that I did,” Scott breathed. “I felt the Alpha watching me, goading me to do it. And in my dream, I did.”

Looking back at the road, Stiles nodded and said, “Well we can’t know anything for sure right now and I’m going to assume that you didn’t, despite the fact that all evidence points to the fact that you did. But you know, there are a handful of other violent killers roaming around out there, including the natural animal population, so let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. I’m more worried about the fact that the freaking Alpha is in your head. Was it just a dream or what? Did you see him? His face?”

Stiles pulled into the driveway and waited for Scott to answer.

“He was in some other form,” Scott explained. “Not a wolf, but something bigger. He looked...feral.”

“Great,” Stiles said and got out of the cab. “You’ve been bitten by a rabid werewolf. If you start foaming at the mouth, I might have to put you down.”

“This is serious, Stiles!” Scott yelled. “I killed someone!” He stood in front of the truck, dejected and downcast. “Maybe we should just let the Argents deal with me. I am a killer.”

“Don’t,” Stiles pointed. “You don’t know that. We don’t know anything for sure yet, okay? Let’s just get inside, you can take a shower and we can figure this out.” Stiles gulped. “Pack, remember?”

Scott looked away. “Yeah.”

Inside, Stiles tried to convince Scott not to give up. He knew there was something they were missing, something big, and if they could get more information, they might be able to get the upper hand. Or get the hell out of there.

“If we can find something,” Stiles thought. “We need to go through my dad’s research again,” he said. “Figure out what he was really doing up here.”

“He had other observation huts, maybe he left some other research stored in them too,” Scott suggested.

Stiles raised his brows at the thought of trekking into the forest again. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Scott made for the shower, and Stiles cautiously went out back to make sure he’d have hot water. Once settled back on the futon under a blanket, he eyed the locked door and the chair propped against the door knob. He heard the water run and felt the tension ease out of his shoulders.

Flipping through one of his father’s journals, Stiles’ eyes found it hard to focus on any particular entry. The pages of blue ink blurred together, and nothing screamed “ALPHA KILLER” or “WEREWOLF 101” at him. He was just about done with it until he found himself focusing on the words “Different Forms” on the second to last page. Not because it seemed relevant, but because it was written in green ink instead of blue, and it was scrawled diagonally across the page as if rushed.

 

_Red - Alpha_

_Yellow - Beta, Omega_

_Blue - ??_

_July 2 -_

_here are non wolf forms_

_shifters of other kinds or origin -- saw tsone with red eyes_

_Ahtna, slatsiin, received bow_

A series of knocks on the door caused Stiles to drop the notebook and get to his feet. He waited for a moment, then tiptoed to the window and looked out onto the porch.

Derek stood in plain clothes, arms crossed, staring at Stiles through the window.

“Okay,” Stiles said. He moved the chair and unlocked the door. “If you’re here for a thank you gift, I’m all out of werewolf treats at the moment,” Stiles said and sat back down on the futon.

“How are you feeling?” Derek asked. He shut the door and didn’t bother locking it.  

Stiles sighed. “Less aches and pains today more _Oh my god how is this my life_? ...you know?”

Derek nodded. “And your wrist? I know you hurt it pretty bad.”

Shocked by the ranger’s concern, Stiles shrugged, “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“We have to get to that other observation hut,” Derek stated.

Shaking his head, Stiles said, “What? You were listening in on our conversation?”

Derek didn’t move.

“Right,” Stiles sighed. “Your momentary brush with sincerity made me forget what a creeper you were.”

Scott came out of the bathroom and threw his towel over a chair. “Derek’s right,” he said. “We have to get there before anyone else does.”

“Sorry if I’m not bending over backwards to put on my hiking gear and rush out into the wilderness again,” Stiles blinked. “Are you forgetting that we all almost died two days ago? Is the approaching full moon giving you temporary memory loss?” He pointed to Derek, “The Argents know what you are, and they’d shoot you again in a heartbeat. And you,” Stiles looked to Scott. “There’s an alpha stalking you and trying to voodoo you into doing his will, which, Earth to Scott, involves killing me and other innocent civilians.” Stiles took a deep breath and nodded, “So yeah, let me just willingly put myself into a certain death scenario again. Where can I sign up?”

Derek didn’t even flinch in the face of Stiles’ bleeding sarcasm, which angered Stiles to no end. The ranger wasn’t even looking at him, but had focused on Scott.

With a tip of his head, Derek crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “I think I know what John has been doing up here,” he explained. He kept his green eyes on Scott. “He was looking for a cure.”

Both Stiles and Scott’s bodies jerked forward as they said, “What?”

Scott shook his head, “Two days ago, you said the only cure was to kill the one that bit you.”

“That’s just a rumor,” Derek said. “And a wolfsbane cure? That’s a myth too. But I couldn’t stop wondering why John would have cataloged all the variants in these mountains.”

“You think he was looking for a cure for lycanthropy?” Stiles laughed. “And why would he be doing that?” Derek suddenly found the cabin floor very interesting, and wouldn’t meet Stiles’ wondering eyes. And then it hit him. After the Hale fire, his father came to a remote wilderness. He studied wolf behavior. He catalogued the plant that could affect werewolves and the ways it would poison them. Ways it could stop them.

Scott stepped toward him, “Stiles...”

But he’d lunged at Derek and had his fingers wrapped around his throat. “Why don’t you just say it, huh, Derek?” Stiles raged. He finally had Derek’s eyes focused on him. The ranger’s hands wrapped around Stiles’ forearms and squeezed.

“I don’t know anything for sure,” Derek said. Stiles loosened his grip around the man’s throat. “That’s why we need to find out what he was doing.”

“Well, alright,” Stiles muttered.  “We just need to be careful, I don’t want you or Scott to end up like that omega, and I don’t want to be killed and have my death certificate read ‘Animal Attack’.”

Derek huffed, “That murder in town was no animal attack.” Scott froze, and Stiles panicked. “It was the Alpha,” Derek clarified. And Stiles realized they had to form a plan of action that could safely maneuver them through the Argent’s careful eye and past whatever the hell this Alpha was doing.

“Yeah, what is this Alpha doing up here anyway, Derek?” Stiles asked a few minutes after they’d emptied a box of journals onto the floor.  

The ranger didn’t blink when he replied, “The body in town was a stranger, probably came up with the Argents. He had a spiral carved into his chest.” Derek turned the page of the journal in his hands. “It means revenge.”

  


They had a plan. They had six plans, actually, Stiles reminded himself, because the thing they could all at least agree on was that one of their plans was bound to fail and the backups weren’t too solid either.

Stiles didn’t feel quite right letting Scott go off with Allison alone, but he’d insisted he could handle it. He and Scott had agreed that they needed to find out her standing in the family and go from there. It was Scott’s job to figure out why the Argents were really up there, try to infiltrate them, and keep tabs on what they were doing. Meanwhile, Stiles was stuck with Ranger Frowny on a quest to find more of John’s research. A quest to find the cure.

Derek estimated the drive at about two hours on the dirt road. He’d called in a favor with some locals and got permission to drive the coveted secret South Road, which turned out to be more of a path carved out of the wilderness by about a dozen vehicles over time. The constant bumps not only made the drive unbearable, but agitated Stiles’ still sore body. Derek remained silent, except to explain how far they were a handful of times.

The Young Creek area, south of Maccoll Ridge, was actually a preserve. They’d found the marking on a map that indicated John had some sort of dwelling there, which Scott later confirmed using one of John’s published articles that cited the pack in that area. Derek hadn’t seemed too concerned that it was a five miles radius that they’d be searching.

“How are we supposed to find the hut before dying due to A, the elements, B, the Argents, C, the Alpha, or D, some combination of all the above?”

Derek had almost smiled. “I can sniff it out. We’ll be there and back by the end of tomorrow.”

“ _The End of Tomorrow_ ,” Stiles mimed. “That will be the title of my tell all supernatural thriller.”

Derek explained the area was mostly flat, an extension of the same valley McCarthy was nestled into, only riddled with waterways connected to the Chitina River. Before they left the truck, Stiles was forced to prove he’d brought an extra pair of wool socks, a rain jacket, and another sweater.

“It’s like you’re preparing for the worst,” Stiles joked, but he got it, he really did. He just hoped all the extra precautions were in vain--that they could get in and out with no oversized iguanas or flying magic bullets. And he’d definitely feel a lot better knowing Scott was okay and not off galavanting up a mountainside with a potential werewolf huntress. Though Stiles did believe she had no idea what had been going on the past few days. He knew there was no way she could’ve flashed them that genuine smile from earlier before he’d sent off his lovesick best friend.

He watched as Derek left a piece of paper on the dashboard, and Stiles eyed it warily. “What is that?”

“Permit for road usage,” Derek answered.

“Like someone is going to come have you towed?” Stiles gaped.

“Stiles,” Derek warned. He shut his mouth and glared at the ranger.

They hiked down from the road to a path leading downhill. Derek pulled out his satellite GPS and led the way. For about twenty minutes, Stiles remained silent as Derek trekked through the snowy woods, pushing through branches and pointing out hazards in the path. They passed a grouping of thorny bushes at one point, a few plants here or there that Derek felt the need to point out, and a clearing of fallen trees that had once been on fire. When Stiles inquired about them, Derek merely said that fires occurred all the time in nature, that it was part of the cycle of death and regrowth. Stiles felt a knot in his chest at the thought of unnatural fires, and what cycle of death and regrowth they could possibly lead to.

When they stopped because Derek insisted they rest, Stiles took inventory of how he felt. This time it wasn’t so bad. After all, Stiles was wearing the proper clothes, and wasn’t constantly in fear for his life. Not constantly, at least.

They shared some trail mix and continued on, Derek finally putting away his GPS and using his werewolf senses. When Stiles caught up and came to stand right by him, he looked over and jumped. Derek’s eyes were that arctic blue again.

_Blue = ??_

“Derek,” Stiles started. He remembered his dad’s journal and couldn’t let it go.

“No.”

Stiles scoffed, “You didn’t even--okay, I just want to know why your werewolf eyes are blue and Scott’s are yellow. And the Alpha’s are presumably red like the color of death and blood and--”

“Do you ever shut up?” Derek scowled.

“What do you think?” Stiles winked, and then regretted it, because Derek didn’t seem okay. In fact, if his rapid eye blinking and heavy breathing were any indication, Stiles’ question had really upset him. “Okay,” Stiles said. “Eye colors are just in the lesson plan for another day.”

He walked ahead a few feet and looked out through the trees ahead. Derek brushed past him and the warmth was toxic to Stiles. He followed close behind, eyes glued to the back of Derek’s head, where he wished he’d had some kind of handbook for navigating. All Stiles ever wanted was answers, and all Derek ever seemed to give him was a trouble.

“There,” Derek pointed and they stopped. The ground started to form an incline and Stiles wondered if the ridge led to the Young Creek area. But Derek fell forward on purpose, hands buried in the dirt a few feet from the start of the hill. He started digging.

Just as Stiles felt the need to ask about buried treasure, Derek hit something hard under the dirt. After a few seconds, he said, “Would you mind?” and motioned for Stiles to help him.

They uncovered a rusty metal trap door, and after it was completely cleared off, Derek pulled it open.  Into the darkness beyond that makeshift door sat answers. Stiles licked his lips.

“I can go first,” Derek offered.

“No,” Stiles said. He pulled out a flashlight and lifted his foot to step inside. But Derek’s hand was on his chest. Stiles whipped his head up and stared at Derek, who’d lifted a finger to his mouth to signal silence.

Then Stiles heard it--the rustle of a branches and the roar of a...bird? Lizard? Dinosaur?

“Shit,” Stiles breathed. And through the trees he saw something greenish rush past them.

Derek pushed Stiles back the way they came and shouted, “Run!” and made off in the opposite direction, in the direction of the thing.

Stiles took a few steps back and looked at the trail they’d made and back at Derek’s disappearing form. “Oh hell,” he muttered, and made a reluctant sprint after Derek, who had wolfed out completely and was face to face with the thing.

If Stiles hadn’t been so piss puddle terrified, he’d have recognized that the thing was part human. It had arms and legs, granted they ended with massive claws, but also a face with eyes that seemed eerily familiar. It was the talon-ended tail that had caught his attention. As Derek tried to claw the torso, Stiles watched the thing slash its tail at the ranger’s neck. The beast roared, looked Stiles dead in the eye, and then ran off into the trees and started circling them.

“Derek!” Stiles yelled and ran up to him. He was clutching his neck and shaking his head at Stiles.

“It’s here for me,” Derek said. He fell into Stiles’ chest and started wobbling on his feet.

“And you know that because it stopped to explain itself before slashing you?” Stiles asked. He looked around and didn’t see the thing, so he pulled Derek forward and tried to find a way back to the hut. “If we can get to the hut or back to the truck,” Stiles thought aloud.

“You’ll never outrun it,” Derek breathed.

Determined to keep them alive, Stiles grabbed Derek’s arm and threw it over his shoulder. They found a rhythm and made it over a small hill, where Stiles saw a break in the trees. And then a clearing.

“No,” Derek tried to say, but he was struggling just the stand at that point. Stiles felt that in the clearing, he’d at least be able to see the thing coming, but be at the disadvantage of being out in the open.

“Trust me,” Stiles said.

A breath against his throat, and Derek replied, “I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me.”

He felt Derek’s neck roll onto his shoulder and his body go limp. They fell, and Stiles struggled to pull the bulky man back up with him. They made it to the clearing and Stiles took a deep breath as he stepped across the snow, pulling Derek. He started to say they could sit and rest, but with his next step a sudden crack echoed under him, and the ground beneath them collapsed.

In the slow motion fluidity, Stiles saw himself sinking to the bottom. He saw the light leave his sight, and Derek’s form unmoving beside him, while his lungs fought the wrath of the water threatening to claim him. And it was almost peaceful. It was almost the thing so tempting to accept, to give in and give up and let Alaska claim him the way it had so many before. The way it had claimed his dad.

But Stiles kicked. In the mere seconds it took him to surface, Stiles felt an infinity pass within him as every molecule that surrounded him bore into his being with a fierce pain. He knew that pain already, he’d been feeling it inside him through all the fear, and revelations, and he managed to make it through that despite it all.

His first breath was long and hurt through his core. He didn’t have time to tell himself to breathe in and out, he had to get Derek’s head above the water too.

“Derek!” he shouted. But he was nowhere, he hadn’t surfaced. Taking a deep breath, Stiles went under. He felt his way around as he pushed himself down until he hit a solid object--Derek’s limp arm. In the blur of the underwater, he could see Derek’s eyes, blue and bright, but fading quickly. Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek’s torso and kicked with everything he had left to get them to the top.  

Derek’s breathing sounded painful. Stiles felt the air shuffle into the other man’s lungs as his fingers dug into Derek’s ribs.

“I--” Derek spat a mouthful of water “--told you no.”

Stiles shivered and continued pounding his legs back and forth. “Can we just--what is happening to you?”

Derek took another breath and explained, “I’m paralyzed from the neck down in eight feet of freezing cold water.”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles looked around for solid ground.

“I am so not having a Rose moment this early in my life,” Stiles muttered. “You are no Jack Dawson, might I add. We are getting out of this water.”

Pulling Derek across the open water, Stiles found a section of solid ice and tested it with a hit from his fist. It didn’t break. He took a second to breathe, then pushed Derek’s body above the water and onto the ice. Then he pulled himself up.

Stiles looked down at the sopping wet Derek. “Is this...are you going to stay like this?”

“I don’t know,” Derek replied. “If I could feel my feet normally, maybe I could tell you. But I have a feeling I’d be numb right now either way.”

“Look, I get it,” Stiles shivered. “I messed up. Can we make it back to the truck?”

Derek stayed silent.

“I’ll take that as no,” Stiles breathed. He couldn’t understand how it was so cold when the sun was still in the sky. “So...hypothermia is going to be a thing.”

Again. Silence.

“If you have the strength,” Derek said, “you’re going to have to pull me back to the hut. We need to make a floor of moss or leaves, start a fire, and get the wet clothes off.”

Stiles nodded, and went to pick Derek up. He had taken him about six steps when he realized the extent of what Derek had said. Take the wet clothes off. Completely off. As in naked.

There was no sign of the thing that had attacked them, and for that, Stiles was thankful. But Derek weighed a lot, and Stiles was starting to not be able to feel his legs. When he finally recognized an area that was not far from the door they’d uncovered, he put Derek down and insisted he be allowed to rest.

“We have to get into a covered, sheltered area,” Derek urged. His face was paler than usual against the snow.

“I’m the one who is saving your life right now,” Stiles snapped, and grabbed the man’s torso to pull him the rest of the way.

They made it to the hut, and Stiles may have put Derek down a little harder than he should have when he went to go get any dry foliage he could find. It took three trips, but he found a few handfuls of pine needles and twigs, enough at least to satisfy Derek’s idea of what fire starting material was.

Somehow there turned out to be three blankets in the crates, and Stiles thanked John Stilinski a thousand times over in that moment. He started the fire, managed to prop open the door so the smoke would trail out, and laid down a blanket for them to lay on.

“Take off your clothes,” Derek whispered, words Stiles never thought he would hear, but spoken in a way that almost made him cringe. He complied, and slowly peeled his own clothes first before motioning if he should do the same to Derek. He’d stripped them down to their underwear when Derek twisted his head and motioned for Stiles to keep going.

Stiles gawked. “These too?”

Derek rolled his eyes, “If you want to get warmer faster, the groin in an area incredibly susceptible to temperature changes.”

“Let me get this straight. You want me to plaster myself across your body, completely naked, and let a heat exchange happen between our two groins?”

Derek stared at Stiles in the battery lantern light and remained stoic.

“Well, I’m personally a fan of ten fingers and ten toes, though I know how you seem to think werewolves can regenerate limbs,” Stiles breathed as he hooked his fingers through Derek’s briefs and pulled them down. He kept his stare at the ground beside Derek, and then threw the dripping things over across the room. In what might be deemed an epileptic seizure or eclectic mating dance, Stiles managed to shimmy out of his own boxers and lay flat on his stomach in a matter of seconds. He grabbed the other blankets and threw them over their bodies.

After about a minute, Derek sighed. “If you aren’t going to give contact, then at least keep the fire going strong throughout the next few hours.”

Stiles groaned, “Oh my god.” He rolled over and pulled Derek into his chest, making the muscled man his little spoon. While he tried thinking of anything other than the curve of Derek’s body under him, all he had to do was picture the thing that had caused Derek’s paralysis and Stiles’ potential boner was gone. “Hey, Derek,” he whispered. “Are you getting any feeling back yet?”

“I can feel my fingers,” Derek said. “I think I’m moving my index fingers.”

Stiles reached around and grabbed Derek’s hand. He smiled when the other man traced some unknown shape onto his palm.

“That’s quite a speedy recovery time,” Stiles grinned before he realized what he’d said.

“You have no idea,” Derek whispered. “Werewolf.”

About an hour passed in silence as they lay there sharing warmth. Stiles managed to keep himself awake and terrified, and Derek slowly figured out which parts of his body he could move next, until he could finally roll over and face Stiles.

“I know what that thing is,” Derek said.

Stiles blinked. “I thought I was doing a good job of hiding that, my bad.”

Derek smiled. He actually smiled, a half smile that was odd and foreign on his face. “It’s a Kanima,” he explained. “It’s a werewolf who has gone wrong somehow. It’s not right.”

“An abomination,” Stiles offered.

Derek just stared at him. Stiles was about to ask if the Kanima could be the Alpha, or in the Alpha’s pack, but Derek had leaned forward so close. All Stiles could do was focus on his face, his lips, his jaw. Before he knew it, he had closed the gap and pressed his lips to Derek’s.

The other man didn’t pull away, and after a few seconds he returned the kiss. The warmth of it was intoxicating. Even if Stiles hadn’t felt a pull to the other man since the moment he met him, his body would have responded to the connection. It was charged, and painful, in the way that too much warmth can be.

And then he felt Derek’s hand on his hip, and suddenly he was closer to Derek, chest to chest, groin to groin. Stiles smiled. “Is this part of the warm the groin hypothermia technique?”

“Oh,” Derek pulled away with concern. “It’s actually a three tier system.” He leaned down and dropped his lips to Stiles’ neck. “Neck,” he whispered, and applied deep, wet kisses. He worked his way back up to Stiles’ mouth and then pushed his arms under Stiles’, and looped them behind Stiles’ back. “Armpits,” Derek kissed, and then pressed his lower body into Stiles. “Groin.” The next kiss was deeper, and Stiles lost his thoughts of fear and situation, and actually felt himself fall into the feeling of pleasure building inside him.

Then Derek pulled away suddenly, his eyes wide and blue. Arctic blue.

“Derek?” Stiles shuddered, shivering from the loss of contact.

“It’s fine,” the other man said and rolled onto his back.

“Hey,” Stiles said, and pushed himself up to look Derek in the eyes. “I actually like you like this,” he smiled. “This blue, it fits you.” Stiles felt himself blush. “It’s beautiful.”

He didn’t expect the look of revulsion to cross Derek’s face, but as soon as it did, Stiles leaned away and rolled over.

After a few minutes of heavy sighs, Derek finally offered, “My eyes weren’t always like this.”

Stiles turned his head. “Yeah?”

“A werewolf’s eyes change color from golden brown to icy blue after he or she commits an act against an innocent life,” Derek said, almost in recitation.

And Stiles almost understood immediately. Something in the chain events surrounding the Hale House fire caused Derek’s eyes to turn. If he thought more about it, he might’ve been concerned, but in that moment, Stiles understood. When it came down to survival, what was someone supposed to do? Everything that Derek had lost was inexcusable.

Stiles leaned over and grabbed Derek’s shoulder. They fell asleep like that, long after they’d warmed themselves back to health.

 

A bang of metal woke Stiles from his slumber, and it only took a second for him to register Derek sitting up next to him completely wolfed out and staring at the open doorway of the hut.

“You,” Derek said so softly Stiles almost didn’t catch it. Derek’s eyes flared blue and he stood, stepping between Stiles and a figure who had just stepped into the hut. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

When his eyes focused in the light, Stiles saw someone familiar. Paul? Peter? It was the man he’d met while hiking up to Bonanza Mine.

Peter sent Derek a slow and devious smirk. “Oh, nephew, many have tried,” he said.

“I thought I succeeded,” Derek growled and Stiles leaned forward and saw fangs protruding from his lips. And then it clicked. Derek had said eye color was a mirror of the purity of the soul. The innocence. Blue was the cold reflection of a heart that had killed an innocent. Stiles just assumed Derek blamed himself for his family’s death. He never would have imagined Derek had actually killed someone.

But he had pretty much been wrong every step of the way so far.

“Hello again, Stiles,” Peter smiled as he directed his stare past Derek. “How interesting that my search has led me to you once again.”

  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a few liberties with the terrain. The places are all real but I erased a few mountains and a river crossing here or there. The mileage from the glacier to the town is accurate though. 
> 
> Chapter title is from the song "Cold Blood" by West Without.
> 
> tsone is Athabaskan for bear, slatsiin means friend
> 
>  
> 
> as always, comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated :D


	9. You've Only Lost the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Another hike though,” Stiles winced, parts of him echoing the pain and wounds from the last week. “What doesn’t kill you,” he tried to smile, and then cringed again because what didn’t kill you in Alaska might come back and finish the job later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while. I do apologize. This fic has a rough plan to be finished by the end of ~~August.~~ the year.

 

Driving back to McCarthy alone was not exactly what Stiles had in mind when he’d said, “It’s time for us to go.” But, driving back to McCarthy alone still meant that Stiles was alive. Though he couldn’t say the same for Derek. For all he knew, Derek could be lying dead on a mountain somewhere, or off having a wonderful escapade with his uncle.

The ranger’s uncle--Peter--had come and swept Derek away with the sunrise. Stiles got chills just thinking about the terse exchange between them.

“What are you doing here?” Derek had asked through heavy breaths. Stiles sensed some sort of struggle going on inside him, but he wasn’t sure what exactly it could be. The ranger had seemed both mentally and physically agitated.

“I am here,” Peter said, “For exactly the same reason you are dear nephew.”

Derek’s eyes flashed blue. “I really don’t think so.”

And then the strange thing happened. It was as if the tension had been drained out of him. Derek turned around, rang out his clothes, and told Stiles to take the truck back to McCarthy. “I’ll meet up with you later,” he’d said. When Stiles began to protest, Derek insisted, and added, “This is family business.”

“Family business,” Stiles repeated and gripped the steering wheel. Having gone through yet another night of terror, a confusing and erotic campfire make out, and probably one of the most awkward family reunions ever, he was prepared to lock himself in his father’s cabin and let whatever was about the hit the fan happen.

Across most of the landscape, the snow from the storm had melted. Patches of it shone under trees or in runoffs, but for the most part, the ground was clear. Everything looked renewed, clear, shiny, as if the storm had purged some of the built up impurities and left behind more vibrancy and color. Stiles marveled at it for a moment before his mind wandered to the events on the glacier, and he heard Neil’s voice. They could have waited, Stiles thought. The storm would have cleared, and they could have come back to Nuuni Pass. And Neil would be alive. Scott would still be human. And--

They wouldn’t have known about the Kanima. Stiles gave himself chills just thinking about it.  Because that lizard thing? What infernal magic was that? He swore he’d looked it straight in the eyes and seen a soul. And why the hell had the Kanima come after Derek? What the hell had Peter been talking about, a “reason” to be up there? And why were people just randomly showing up around his father’s huts?

He only hoped that Scott had gotten into less trouble and found more information from Allison.

By time Stiles rolled into town, it was late in the morning. He passed the area of the animal attack, now cordoned off with crime scene tape. A wave of mild terror and disgust shuddered through him at the thought, and images from Neil’s plane flashed through his mind. Stiles shook himself and put the truck in park. He ordered enough food at Saloon for three or four people, then on a whim decided to get a few bottles of booze from the side liquor store to top it all off. When he finally settled onto the futon with a stack of John’s journals, he’d showered, finished off a burger, and helped himself to a glass of amber liquid.

Stiles threw himself into searching for clues. He’d stoically ignored the passages in the early journals where John kept mentioning “the monster inside”. If it hadn’t been painfully obvious over the last few days, Stiles still couldn’t face the fact when it was right in front of him in his father’s own handwriting.

John had been a werewolf.

Stiles shook his head and then took another swig of whisky. While it seemed to explain almost everything, there were still a few problems that it didn’t even touch on. How had John become afflicted with lycanthropy? Seemingly just after an entire Hale family had been mercilessly murdered? Or had he always been a werewolf?

“Wait,” Stiles thought aloud. “Does that make me a werewolf?” He shook the ridiculous notion from his mind and tried to focus.

The Hale fire was the starting point. That was what sent John into hiding. But why--Stiles wanted to know--Alaska, why--McCarthy of all places--had John banished himself to a lifetime of solitude?

It was there, somewhere, it had to be. This freakish town, the Argents, Derek--and Stiles perked up, the memory of the other man’s lips on his own. Stiles remembered the press of heat of the other man’s body. No--he shook himself. Derek was--

Derek was the only person he could connect to his father back then and now. He had to know more than he was telling Stiles. And for a split second, Stiles wondered why Derek would hide anything from him when he knew what was at stake. But the idea fell away as more liquor tickled his tongue.

“It’s gotta be in here somewhere,” he muttered and continued scouring the pages for answers.

A few hours and half a bottle of whiskey later, he shook his head. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore,” Stiles whined and threw the last journal across the room. He could feel the emotion in his gut, pulling him in and pushing at his heart, but he didn’t want to feel it. He didn’t want to be overcome with it. His father’s words were loud in his head. I don’t deserve him.

So he slept.

 

 

 

“Stiles!”

A chill shot up his spine and Stiles’ eyes flew open.

“Scott, buddy, you just sent my heart into my throat.”

Stiles looked up to see Scott smiling down. He couldn’t imagine why Scott would be smiling after everything that happened, but then Stiles remembered he’d just rekindled some sort of romance with Allison.

Stiles plastered the best smile he could muster across his face. “So you talked to her?”

His best friend kept grinning. “She’s even more amazing than I remember, Stiles,” Scott replied. Stiles could almost see the stars in his eyes. He seemed relaxed, almost back to his normal self, or as normal as he could be now that he was a werewolf. The stress from the past few days was gone, and all that remained was the optimistic, lovelorn guy he’d always known Scott to be.

“Amazing enough to have told you what was going on?” Stiles asked. He grabbed the bottle of Jack, unscrewed the cap, and took a big gulp. Scott sighed and explained how he met up with Allison at the archery range. “There’s an archery range here?” Stiles squawked.

“Yeah, across from the second creek bridge outside of town,” Scott replied casually. He continued to describe the encounter, which started with an archery lesson and went on to lunch at the Saloon. After they caught up on the last decade or so of their lives, Scott had dropped the question about the Argents presence in McCarthy. “She said they’ve been here for generations, but they stepped up their presence when she was a little girl.” Scott’s demeanor seemed to darken and he added, “I think that correlates to the time around the Hale fire.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, “You don’t say. I’m not even surprised.”

“Wait,” Scott stopped him from taking another sip of whiskey. “There’s more.”

“Oh, well don’t hold back Scotty--”

“Allison knows why you’re here,” Scott blurted. “And she knows we are looking for something. She knows we want answers and she said she knows where to find them. She’s going to take us on a hike tomorrow.”

Stiles scrunched his face up in disbelief. “What are you even saying, Scott? How does Allison know we want to know something? How does she even know that there is something to know?” Stiles stood up and wobbled over to the kitchen, the room blurring here and there across his vision. “Does she know her family are psycho killers? Did you tell her they shot Derek? Did you tell her you’re a werewolf? What would possess you to let the femme fatale Argent take us on a hike into only god knows where--where she could dump our bodies and no one would be the wiser.”

“Stiles,” Scott frowned.

“Scott, what did you even find out? It sounds like she was just blowing smoke up your--”

“Stiles!” his best friend grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him until Stiles looked into his eyes. Golden brown stared back at him. “You’re drunk! Have you been listening? Allison is going to help us. She knows there are things up here, her exact words were, ‘Things outside of the natural.’ Okay? ”

Stiles stared at Scott and steadied himself against his best friend. “You trust her?” he finally managed to ask.

“Yes.”

“Well then I do too.” At the words, Scott’s grip on his shoulders loosened, and he pulled Stiles into a hug. “Another hike though,” Stiles winced, parts of him echoing the pain and wounds from the last week. “What doesn’t kill you,” he tried to smile, and then cringed again because what didn’t kill you in Alaska might come back and finish the job later.

“Hey,” Scott finally said when he broke the embrace, “did you and Derek find the other hut?”

Stiles told Scott about the Kanima encounter, and the hypothermic situation, and Scott’s eyebrows rose to an unnatural height. “Hey now,” Stiles warned. “I know what’s going through your mind and before you jump to any conclusions, let me say that nothing happened between us.” Scott smiled and Stiles added, “Because Derek’s uncle broke into the hut and whisked Derek away.”

“Wait,” Scott frowned. “What? Derek’s uncle? What is he doing here? Shouldn’t he be dead from the fire or something?”

“Yes, I think Derek thought the same thing. Believe me,” Stiles grabbed the whiskey. “That is like number sixty seven on the list of questions I have for Derek Hale.” He downed more whiskey.

Scott started to put his coat on and said how bummed he was they didn’t find any more of John’s things.

“Wait, where are you going?” Stiles said as Scott wrapped a scarf around his neck.

“To the Saloon. I’m meeting up with Allison. I was going to invite you out for a drink too, but I really don’t think you need one.”

Stiles yelled a few words of warning about bears and alphas and kanimas and crazed gunmen, and watched Scott’s excited face disappear around a bend in the road. It was already getting dark and cold and so Stiles slammed the door closed. And then with a bang, something fell from the sloped ceiling above the door.

“What the--” Stiles jumped. Glancing up, he saw a piece of the inner roof had fallen and before him were a handful of scattered papers. He fell to his knees and picked up one of them. It was John’s handwriting.

_Interviewed tsicogh -- no sign of amulet. They say perimeter is still safe. He will come to the great sdaa when the frost is gone._

It was dated two weeks before his father’s disappearance in April. Just as Stiles reached out to grab more of the papers, a knock startled him.

“Really?” he groaned. Picking up the sheets haphazardly, Stiles shoved them behind the stack of journals on the desk and went to the door. “Who is it?”

After a few seconds of silence, his heartbeat quickened, and he went to turn the lock.

“Derek,” he finally heard.

Stiles sighed and pulled open the door. “Great, just who I wanted to see.”

 

 

 

Derek sat back in the chair, dark half moons below his heavy-lidded eyes. “You smell drunk,” was the first thing he had said when he came through the door. Stiles had seen him glance at the bottle of Jack before he took off his coat and sat down.

“How come there isn’t a thing,” Stiles started, “You know, like with vampires? How come there isn’t a thing with werewolves where I can just rescind your invitation and kick you out of my house?”

The ranger studied him for a moment before he said, “This isn’t your house.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” Stiles replied.

“Is Scott back yet?”

Stiles blinked. “Well, that depends what you mean by ‘back’? I guess?”

Derek shook his head. “Why are you drunk? It’s barely dark out.” He studied Derek’s expression and posture. His shoulders were stiff, his posture rigid, and even though he had to be a little bit exhausted after the night they’d had, he stared back at Stiles with almost an electrifying purpose when he said, “We need to find Scott and get out of here. It isn’t safe.”

“Oh really? And why is that? Remind me again?” Stiles grabbed the Jack and guzzled it.

“Stiles,” Derek started and stood to approach him.

Stiles threw up his hand and hit Derek in the chest. “No, Derek, you know what, why don’t you explain yourself for once. You’ve been hiding the truth behind those pale green eyes since the minute I first insulted you up at Kennecott. So do us both a favor and just tell me. You know what happened to my dad back in Beacon Hills and you know what happened to him last April.”

The other man took a step back. “Stiles, you’re drunk.”

“No!” Stiles shouted. “I’m enlightened! There’s a difference. I can finally see all the pieces.”  

Derek rolled his eyes and turned around, all tense shoulders and muscle. That’s when Stiles saw it. The top of Derek’s shirt was littered with small bloodstains. He followed the trail of red up to the nape of Derek’s neck where a constellation of dull, red marks stretched across it.

“Derek,” he whispered, the indignation from before replaced with concern. He came up behind him and reached up to the injured skin. Before he met flesh, Derek spun around and clamped a hand around his wrist.

“I can give you answers, but you have to come with me,” Derek’s eyes fell to Stiles lips for a moment before darting back to his eyes. “You and Scott.”

“Yeah right,” Stiles said and broke the contact. He curled up on the futon with the bottle of whiskey. “Scott doesn’t trust you, and I’m beginning to think he has the right idea.”

Derek narrowed his eyes.

“What happened to your neck, Derek?” Stiles asked, the hint of a sneer in his tone. He stood up again and pointed. “Where’s your uncle? The one you thought was dead? Why’d you say that you killed him? What’s to say you aren’t just leading me and Scott into a trap?”

“And we are back to this again,” Derek replied. “I saved your life, you saved mine, and now we’re back to square one. You on the offensive and me--”

“And you, Derek, hiding behind your callousness and good looks, yet again.”

“I’m not--” he stopped. Derek took a few noticeably deep breaths. His eyes were glued to the floor in front of Stiles’ feet. Between them was a vast canyon of tension, distrust, frustration--emotional and sexual--and it was just getting bigger.

Stiles took a long sip from the bottle and put it down. “You’re not what, Derek? Going to tell me what I want to know? That’s fine. That’s a-okay. You don’t want to answer any of the relevant questions about why me and my friend, and even my dad, have had our lives on the line in bum fuck Alaska.” Stiles stepped closer to Derek. “Don’t even bridge the subject of the alpha that’s out there killing and biting people, or the hunters who are slicing werewolves in half.” Stiles raised his hand to Derek’s face, and the other man’s eyes finally met his own. “But tell me this,” Stiles whispered. “Why is it that no matter how rude you are, or how much I distrust you, or I don’t know, all the supernatural shit that’s happened while I’ve been with you--a part of me still just wants say ‘Screw it!’ and jump your bones.”

Derek blinked. He lowered his head a mere inches from Stiles’. “I don’t trust you,” he whispered. His gaze was torrential and Stiles couldn’t pull away even if he’d wanted to. He felt Derek’s breath on his lips as the other man added, “But I want you.”

The kiss was different than it had been the night before. They weren’t recovering from falling into icy waters, and they weren’t half terrified for their lives after the kanima attacked. It was a taste of the whiskey on Stiles’ breath, the salty exhaustion on Derek’s, and the electric bond between them. Stiles wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, each in the other’s embrace. He finally broke free to take a breath. “Derek,” he murmured. The other man had put an arm around his neck and one around his lower back.

“You’re drunk, Stiles,” Derek mouthed against his cheek.

“And your point?” Stiles kissed at the side of Derek’s face, his neck, his collar, and then looked him in the eyes. “You’re a werewolf. Did you hear a skip in my heart when I said I wanted you?”

He felt the warmth of Derek’s breath against his jaw before the other man pressed another kiss to his lips.

It was Stiles who pulled Derek over to the futon and pushed him down into a seated position. It was Stiles who wrapped his legs around Derek’s hips and sat down. And it was Stiles who, moments after leaning down to brush his lips against Derek’s neck, pushed himself to the edge of the futon and puked up two-thirds of the bottle of whiskey.

 

 

 

He couldn’t remember much after that. He had woken up sore on the futon, covered in a blanket with a wet rag on his forehead. The scent of throw up wafted from the trash can on the floor beside him. Slowly, it all started to come back to him.

“Well that could’ve gone better,” he muttered.

He’d showered, chugged a few glasses of water, and taken something for his headache, by the time Scott sauntered into the cabin and sat down.

“You look happy,” Stiles said as threw a heavy knit shirt over his head.

Scott smiled sheepishly. He started to say something but then stopped and wrinkled his nose. “What is that smell?”

Stiles snorted. “My liver, probably.” He remembered the garbage and the night before. “Oh, and I threw up.”

“Allison is waiting for us on the outskirts of town,” Scott explained. Then, as Stiles finished getting ready, his best friend began a long winded description of his night with the Argent. They talked in the dim light of the Saloon for hours, connecting on “a new level”. Apparently, there was a lot more that happened in high school than Scott or Stiles had ever realized. Allison and Lydia had never stopped being friends, they just had to appear to not be friends anymore.

“She was what?” Stiles’ eyes just about popped out of his head.

“Bitten,” Scott repeated. “Something--an alpha she thinks--bit her.”

Stiles sat there flabbergasted for a moment. “So Lydia Martin is a werewolf?” Scott shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he continued. “Derek said you either turn or you die.”

“Remember when she’d been in the hospital for a while?”

“So she’s not a werewolf,” Stiles concluded.

Scott raised his eyebrows. “She’s a Banshee.”

“A what now?”

“Maybe Allison can explain it,” Scott sighed.

Stiles finished tying his bootlaces. “Well someone better.”

 

 

 

After throwing a pack together, they took a four wheeler south of town and down an unfamiliar trail. “How do you know where to go?” Stiles screamed in Scott’s ear as the other man wove his way through a series of primitive trails.

“Scent,” was all he got in response before they took a sharp left and he tightened his grip around Scott’s midsection.

Forty minutes later, Stiles had quickly figured out that Allison Argent was someone it was incredibly difficult to stay angry with. Her elegant smile and animated eyes, coupled with the simple and sweet nature of her tone, made it almost impossible for him to interrogate her.

“I was so worried about you,” she said and embraced him.

He frowned. “Me? Why would you be worried about me?”

When she pulled away, her hands gripped his arms, and with a determined gaze she answered, “We have to stick together. You, me, Scott. We’re the only ones up here that don’t have ulterior motives.”

“If you don’t have some hidden agenda, then you won’t mind telling me what the hell is going on,” Stiles said. He wanted answers. “In fact, I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what you know.”

Allison paused for a moment, and then pulled her hair behind her ears. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I don’t know where to start.” When Stiles couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes, she put up her hands. “I guess I can start with high school? Right? I mean that’s where it all starts for us.”

“I would say so,” Stiles mocked.

“When I came to Beacon Hills, I thought it was just like any other town,” she began, her brows gathering and forming stress lines on her forehead. “But I soon found out it wasn’t just any town, and my family wasn’t there to conduct business as usual, at least, not the business I knew about.” She began pacing. “All those animal attacks---you already know this right?”

“They were werewolf attacks,” Scott stated.

Allison seemed pleased and horrified at the same time. “Yeah, and it was a feral alpha. A man--a werewolf--who had spent years recovering from burn damage that would have killed anyone else.”

“Burn damage?” Stiles questioned, his mind racing. “From what?”

She sent Scott a pleading look, but turned back to Stiles and swallowed. “My aunt, Kate. She discovered a pack of werewolves in Beacon Hills years before, and took it upon herself to trap them in a house and burn them alive.”

Stiles’ mouth dropped. “The Hales? He was a Hale?”

“Peter Hale,” Allison whispered, a tear falling from her eye.

Stiles and Scott shared a heated look, and before Scott could say anything, Stiles had thrown up a hand in protest. “And what happened to Peter Hale, huh? You try to put him down like the feral dog he was? It wasn’t enough that your family had killed everyone he loved?”

“No!” Allison cried. “That wasn’t us! We have a code, and Kate never followed it. She had no--she wasn’t right. But Peter wasn’t either. The fire had done something to him. He was crazed, bent on revenge. He killed everyone responsible for the fire and then tried to kill me.”

Scott rushed forward to grab Allison’s hand. With his other hand, he wiped a few of her tears. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too upsetting.”

“The hell you don’t,” Stiles said. Suddenly it all fell into place. Peter Hale was the alpha, and he was on some crazy revenge quest and had followed the Argents all the way up to crazyville, Alaska. “You have to tell us everything you know about him in case we have to go up against him.”

After a small sniffle, Allison replied, “You won’t.”

Scott froze, eyes wide with terror. “Derek’s uncle,” he breathed. “He’s the alpha.”

“What are you talking about?” Allison questioned. “I watched Peter Hale die more than a decade ago. We burned him alive before his nephew slashed his throat.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles spat.

“My dad, me, Lydia, Jackson--we tried to fight Peter after he killed my aunt,” she explained. “It didn’t go well for us until Lydia threw a molotov cocktail on him and weakened him.”

Stiles heart ached when he posed his next question. “And the nephew? Derek?”

Allison blinked, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “He stood over Peter and whispered something in his ear. Then he slashed his throat. It gave him the alpha powers. If you’re looking for an alpha, it’s Derek.”  

“I knew it!” Scott exclaimed. “I told you Stiles. We couldn’t trust him.”

“Well then we have two problems,” Stiles sighed. “In addition to the other long list of things, we can add not being able to trust Derek, and also having to avoid both him and his uncle.”

“Stiles.” Allison raised her eyebrow. “I told you, Peter’s dead. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Huh,” he replied, and walked over to the edge of the trail and stared out into the distance. “Well, he’s sure getting around pretty well on McCarthy’s scenic nature trails...for a dead guy.”

Allison froze. For a few moments, they all stood still. “You’re sure it’s him?” she finally asked.

Stiles licked his lips. “Going off of Derek’s reaction of ‘You’re supposed to be dead’, yes, I think it must be crazy Uncle Peter. And,” Stiles frowned, “One can only guess why he’s up here if not to finish the revenge killings he started.”

At that, Allison jerked forward. “No,” she said. “There’s another reason why he’s up here.”

“And what might that be? And if you say werewolf cure to me, I swear to god--”

“It’s more something I have to show you,” she interrupted. “Come on, we need to get there before dark.”

 

 

 

 

They followed May Creek down into a valley full of small hills and patches of trees. Hiking in relative silence, Stiles ruminated, trying to wrap his head around the facts that Allison had put before him.

Derek had killed Peter. 28 Days Later aside, that was a big red flag. Then again, Peter had been killing people. But there was something nagging at him, something he couldn’t quite catch. He knew there was more to it than that, and a part of him still wanted to trust Derek. And it wasn’t just the part of him that was attracted to the guy. It was the part that knew and felt deeply the kind of loss Derek knew. Stiles was sure he wouldn’t have killed his uncle, someone who survived that horrible fire, if he hadn’t had a good reason.

“Stiles.”

He shook himself from any more thoughts of the green-eyed ranger and looked at Allison.

“Yeah?”

She began walking beside him. “I wanted to finish my story.” He remembered Scott mentioning Lydia, and nodded. Allison cleared her throat. “After what happened--well, let me go back. Before Peter died, he bit Lydia. But she didn’t turn and she didn’t die. She healed like a normal person and--my dad and I couldn’t figure it out.”

“Well, what else is there? Immunity?” Stiles asked.

“That’s what we thought too--but nothing suggested that.” They’d reached a slight hill and started ascending in a zigzag pattern. When they reached the top, they took a break. Stiles took out a pop tart and was mid bite when Allison sat down and started on again. “She presented a few months later with bizarre behavior, blackouts, hallucinations. She blamed a lot of it on us. Jackson was distant, and it wasn’t until I walked in on her screaming in the locker room that it began to fall into place.”

“What’s that?” Stiles said between chews.

Allison’s face paled. “Banshee.”

A few crumbs flew out of his mouth when he laughed. “And I’m supposed to know what that is?”

“It’s a fore--” but her explanation was cut off by a howl in the distance.

Stiles shot off the ground and threw the rest of his pop tart on the grass. “What was that? Scott?”

His best friend’s eyes were glowing, “I don’t know. I can’t tell if it was him.”

“And by ‘him’ you mean Derek?” Stiles huffed.

Scott sent him a glare. Before he could form a response, a growling to their left had them all turning and backing away.

Suddenly Allison was pulling a crossbow from her bag, and Scott had shifted into--well, a werewolf, Stiles guessed.

“That could be, what?” Stiles cried, “A bear? A wolf? The alpha? The kanima? Something else horrifying that we haven’t yet come across that will surely dismember us and leave no freaking trace?” He stepped behind Scott and added, “No one thought to tell me to bring a weapon?”

“Allison--” Scott began to say, but then stopped when a dark shape started to approach in the bushes.

“Run to higher ground,” Allison yelled.

He didn’t know what to do. Fifty different scenarios raced through his head, most of which ended in a bloody and slow death. But he ran up the hillside, at the top of which two rockier inclines began to rise. “Which--”

“Just keep going up!” he heard from behind him. With the blood pounding through his head, he couldn’t even tell who had yelled it.

Stiles started up the rocky slope, his pack slipping from side to side behind him every time he shoved his feet into a different crevice.  It was a sea of bleak grey rocks, dirt, runoff--all sharp edges and traps. A few times, his foot would get stuck, or he’d slip on some moss, or the rock underfoot would slide. His knees were bruised, his hands ached from the jagged and unforgiving surfaces.

He thought about how ridiculous it was, the three of them out there alone looking for answers. He thought about Scott and the features he’d just seen twist onto his face. It was amazing--he’d seen Derek’s face that way, and been terrified. But on Scott? It made him feel safe, if even for the briefest moment.

At the top of what seemed like the midpoint of the rocky ridge, Stiles tripped and clawed his way back to a standing position. Finally surefooted, he turned to help his friends. There was no one. Allison and Scott weren’t behind him. He looked all around him, at the edges of the hill and brush below, but there was no sign of movement. If was like they just disappeared.

“Fuck,” he cursed and turned to the opposite side of the ridge. Someone had said keep going up. Maybe if he climbed to the top, he might be able to get a better idea of where his friends were.

Ten minutes went by and he’d climbed maybe thirty feet. He still couldn’t see anything else below him, and the ridge was getting steeper. By the time he reached the top, he was completely out of breath and sore. He sat taking deep breaths and tried to keep his eyes darting around the landscape looking for movement. He glanced behind him at the other end of the ridge where the uneven green terrain plateaued. It disappeared, probably down again, but jutted back up somewhere in the distance into a small mountain.

Stiles had the urge to go that way, but he wasn’t sure if he should. Allison hadn’t given them any idea of where they were supposed to be going other than “the end of May Creek”. But something about that mountain seemed different. He found himself walking to the other end of the plateau, enamored with the black edges of the canyons, the hues of blue and purple showing the vibrant grey rocks. Out of the corner of the eye, it might seem like any other mountain, but after closer consideration it was---

\--a long way down off the edge of the ridge. Stiles felt the ground leave him and clutched at the air, his heart in his throat. His left side hit something rocky, he wasn’t sure because he’d snapped his eyes closed and shielded them with an arm. This side of the ridge had bigger, sharper rocks, and it felt like someone had taken a large rake and was stabbing him with it over and over again. At one point, he hit some brush, and then a sear shot through him followed by what felt like half a dozen needles. It was grass, and bigger, more rounded rocks after that, until he finally rolled onto something relatively flat. Stiles felt the blood pooling on his abdomen. Something had punctured him, and the exposed liquid was sending shivers through him. When the shock wore off, he’d be screwed. No first aid kit, no supplies, no friends to help him.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, face down and battered, but when he rolled over and opened his eyes, he couldn’t help but snort.

Stiles had fallen at least twenty feet down into a ravine. And from the looks of both sides, he’d have been lucky to make it back up with no injuries. Lifting his head to inspect the damage, he could see another blood stain on his thigh in addition to the two on his chest and stomach.

“Great,” he said. Sitting up, he pressed a hand to his stomach wound and looked down the ravine. To one end, he could see a build up of boulders and runoff. At the other, a clear line of passage out of the ravine led into a sparse wooded area.

As he pulled himself up, he couldn’t help but laugh a little, which ended up sending waves of pain through his belly. “Fucking Alaska,” he said. “As if anything would ever just be easy.”

Stiles stood and let the sharp pains press into him, the bruises revealing all the places Alaska had managed to find weakness. He turned to check the status of his bag, but froze when a blur of black registered in the distance.

He jumped and it hurt like hell--but it didn’t matter because he could see it. At the end of the ravine, on top of the biggest boulder, a grey wolf stood still and stared at him.

“Shit,” he thought he said before making a run for it in the opposite direction. He thought maybe if he could get to the trees, climb one, or hide somewhere, he might be safe from it. The pain coursed through him, a fire across his skin through the sweat and the blood. He barely registered that he couldn’t feel his legs, or that he’d thrown his pack at some point after the initial sprint. When he reached the end of the ravine, he didn’t bother pausing to figure out the best way to go. Stiles ran past dozens of trees and over a small hill until he came up to a creek and collapsed at the water’s edge. He tried to catch his breath but every inhale stung and every exhale faltered through his shaking.

He was going to die.

He heard the rustle of something behind him and turned just in time to catch the wolf’s approach. “Fuck this,” he cried, and threw his legs into the creek. The cold rush of the water didn’t matter much, Stiles could barely feel his legs as it was, and it showed in his pathetic attempt to wade across the creek quickly. If the wolf had wanted to, it could have attacked him. That thought crossed his mind when he threw himself down on the bank at the other side. He rolled over and sat up to find the wolf just standing in the spot he’d left, staring.

Every piece of him ached, throbbed, bled, but in that moment, a piece of himself he didn’t know he had panged with a warmth of regret and sadness. It flooded through him.

Then the wolf sat, breaking the gaze to stare at something behind Stiles. His mind jumped to a million crazy conclusions, sixty of which had to do with aliens, but he willed himself to turn his head and follow the animal’s stare.

“Really?” Stiles groaned when his eyes took in a small stone hut about thirty yards in the distance. The ground in front of which had a path, nothing overly used, but definitely something that had seen foot traffic recently. Mustering up some unknown strength, Stiles limped forward, mind made up that if he was going to die, at least it could be in some manmade structure away from the overly intense stare of a wolf and/or other creepy creatures.

Upon approaching the small structure, he could tell it had been used recently. For what, he couldn’t say. And by recent, he thought, maybe in the last few years. The door seemed well attached, so he had that going for him.

He traced a hand across the wooden door and took a deep, shaky breath. Clutching the doorknob for a few seconds, Stiles licked his lips, and pushed.

After taking a step inside, he was enveloped in complete darkness. He tried to feel around for something, but to no avail. He turned around, intent on feeling his way to the wall closest to him so he could trace the room, but stopped when he heard the sound of a match striking.

“Took you long enough,” a familiar male voice rang out from the back of the room.

Stiles froze. He didn’t need to turn around to confirm what he suddenly knew to be true, but he found himself pivoting on his foot and taking in the sight of an older, run down looking man in red flannel sitting in a rocking chair.

“Neil?” Stiles breathed, and collapsed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tsicogh - Ahtna Athabascan for sea otter, or sea otter man  
> sdaa -- Ahtna Athabascan for bend in the river
> 
> Chapter title is taken from the Mumford and Sons song "Believe"
> 
> Comments are a welcomed sight.


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